Kupu & Scenario Cards — Antarctica
Lesson 1 · Activity 1 · Years 9–10 · cut-out classroom set
How to use
Print one set per pair and cut along the dashed lines. Students predict each kupu's meaning, then match each kupu to the scenario it best illuminates and explain why. The kaiako confirms meanings in the whole-class kōrero. Full runsheet: Lesson 1, Activity 1.
Ngā Kupu · The Four Words
Students write their predicted working meaning in the box — no looking up.
Kaitiakitanga
Our working meaning:
Whakapapa
Our working meaning:
Papatūānuku
Our working meaning:
Mauri
Our working meaning:
Ngā Tūāhua · The Four Scenarios (real science — match a kupu to each)
Scenario 1. Antarctica's ice holds about 54 metres of potential sea-level rise; the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone could add up to 5 m if it collapses.
Which kupu? Why? ____________________
Scenario 2. Fresh meltwater off Antarctica cools the ocean south-east of New Zealand, shifting the currents and weather that shape our coast (Pauling et al., 2025).
Which kupu? Why? ____________________
Scenario 3. NZ seas are projected to rise 0.5–0.9 m by 2100 — with land also sinking, parts of Aotearoa face closer to 1 m — threatening the coast, moana, and kai that sustain communities.
Which kupu? Why? ____________________
Scenario 4. The Southern Ocean's food web — krill, fish, penguins, whales — depends on cold, stable conditions that warming is now disrupting.
Which kupu? Why? ____________________
🪶 Kaiako guide — working meanings & how to run the match
These are starting points for the class, not the authority. Each kupu carries more than a one-line gloss, and its fullest meaning sits with your kaiako Māori, your local marae and your rohe. Use these to get the activity running, and treat anything a local expert tells you as outranking what is written here.
- Kaitiakitanga — the responsibility to care for a place and hand it on in good condition. It is an obligation, not ownership, and it runs to future generations.
- Whakapapa — layered relationship and descent. It says people are related to the natural world rather than separate from it, so a change in one part travels to another.
- Papatūānuku — the earth herself, understood as an ancestor and a living being rather than a resource or a backdrop.
- Mauri — the life force in a place, a river, a species or a system. Mauri can be strong or diminished, which makes it a precise way to talk about the health of an ecosystem.
Running the match (this is the important part). There is no single correct pairing, and ākonga should not be marked as if there were. Every kupu can illuminate every scenario; what is being assessed is the reasoning — can they connect the science in the card to the idea in the kupu, in their own words? Ask "why that one?" before you ask "is it right?", and accept any answer the ākonga can justify from the card.
Readings that tend to work well, offered so you are not starting cold:
- Scenario 1 (54 m of potential sea-level rise) → often Papatūānuku: the scale is the body of the earth itself changing. Kaitiakitanga also reads well if ākonga focus on what that leaves the next generation.
- Scenario 2 (Antarctic meltwater shifting currents off Aotearoa) → often whakapapa: the physical connection between two places is the whole point of the card.
- Scenario 3 (rising seas threatening coast, moana and kai) → often kaitiakitanga: responsibility to the communities and the moana that feed them.
- Scenario 4 (Southern Ocean food web disrupted) → often mauri: a living system whose vitality is being diminished.
Still to localise: the meanings above are a general teaching framing, not iwi- or hapū-specific knowledge, and this handout deliberately makes no claim about how any particular iwi understands these kupu. Ask your kaiako Māori or local marae how these words are used in your rohe, and let that reading lead.