Best for
Treaty documents, petitions, tribunal material, newspapers, letters, speeches, protest texts, and image-based source analysis across Years 9-13.
Aotearoa histories • English • Years 9-13 • Print-ready tomorrow
Primary Source Analysis Framework
Use this framework when ākonga need more than a comprehension worksheet. It teaches them to read a source for provenance, context, language, power, missing voices, and historical significance so their judgements are evidence-based and mana-aware.
Free source-analysis scaffold, premium adaptation path
This version is ready to print. Te Wānanga becomes useful when you want the same structure wrapped around sources from your rohe, a local archive, a class novel, or a differentiated assessment sequence.
- Swap in local petitions, photographs, oral histories, or tribunal excerpts.
- Generate a younger scaffold or a seminar-grade analytical version.
- Save a class-specific copy into My Kete and keep refining it in Creation Studio.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Use length: 30-45 minutes for a single source or 60 minutes if students compare two sources.
- Grouping: Whole-class modelling first, then pairs for the framework and an individual final judgement.
- Prep: Pre-select one rich but manageable source and clarify any kupu, names, or historical references students must know first.
- Teaching move: Keep pushing from “what does it say?” toward “why was it made this way, and whose interests or voice does that serve?”
- Support / stretch: Use the quick template for support; ask extension students to triangulate with a second source or challenge the source’s silences.
Resources already provided
- Five analysis moves for provenance, context, language, corroboration, and judgement
- Prompt boxes for missing voices and mātauranga Māori considerations
- Structured response space for note-taking and synthesis
- A built-in support/extend pathway
- A matching teacher-only curriculum companion
If tomorrow’s lesson asks students to analyse a source properly, kaiako do not need to build an extra planning sheet or writing scaffold first.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions
- We are learning how to analyse who made a source, when, and for what purpose.
- We are learning how context and power shape what a source reveals and conceals.
- We are learning how to support a historical judgement with evidence.
Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria
- I can identify the source’s creator, audience, and likely purpose.
- I can explain what the source shows and what it may leave out.
- I can justify my conclusion with evidence from the source and its context.
Curriculum integration / Te Marautanga alignment
The companion page makes the curriculum fit explicit around source analysis, historical evidence, perspective, critical interpretation, and English text-study moves in Aotearoa contexts.
Why source work matters in Aotearoa
Primary sources are never neutral. Official documents, speeches, letters, oral histories, waiata, photographs, court records, and newspaper reports all carry perspective. In Aotearoa, good source analysis also means asking how colonial institutions recorded events, whose voices had access to the archive, and whose authority was minimised or ignored.
Through a mātauranga Māori lens, students should not treat written colonial records as automatically more “real” than kōrero tuku iho, whakapapa knowledge, or community memory. Source integrity starts with understanding genre, context, and who is speaking.
1. Source it
Who created this source, when, where, and for which audience? What power or role did they hold at the time?
2. Context it
What was happening around this source? What wider conflict, policy, movement, or relationship is it sitting inside?
3. Read it closely
What words, images, omissions, tone, and framing choices are doing the most work?
4. Corroborate it
Which other source would you need beside this one to test, deepen, or challenge its claims?
5. Question power
Whose perspective is central here, and whose voice is absent, filtered, or spoken about rather than heard directly?
6. Judge it
What can this source help you understand, and what can it not do on its own?
Evidence ladder
- Observe: Note exact phrases, visual details, dates, symbols, or claims.
- Interpret: Explain what those choices suggest about purpose or perspective.
- Contextualise: Link the source to the historical moment and wider issue.
- Corroborate: Name another source you would compare with it and why.
- Judge: State what the source is useful for and what caution is still needed.
Source details
Title or description:
Creator, date, audience:
Context and purpose
What was happening at the time, and what did the creator likely want this source to do?
Power and perspective
Whose voice is centred here? Whose voice is limited, missing, or spoken over?
Corroboration move
What second source would you place beside this one, and what would you be checking for?
Historical judgement
Complete this statement using evidence from the source: This source is most useful for understanding...
Support option: start with “This source is useful because...” Stretch option: add a sentence naming one limitation or one further source needed.
Tautoko / Support
- Use the quick template and pre-highlight the relevant source sections.
- Let students discuss answers orally before writing.
- Reduce the task to one source and one judgement statement.
Whakawhānui / Extend
- Ask students to compare a Māori-led source with a Crown or newspaper source.
- Have students explain how the same source might be interpreted differently over time.
- Move into counter-narrative writing once analysis notes are strong enough.
Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Alignment
Social Sciences — Tikanga ā-Iwi
Level 3–4: Investigate how historical, political, and economic processes shape societies; understand how people participate in communities to create change; analyse different perspectives on social, cultural, and environmental issues.
English — Research and Literacy
Level 3–4: Gather, evaluate, and synthesise information from multiple sources; construct well-reasoned arguments using evidence; communicate social science understanding clearly in written, oral, and visual forms.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
Social Sciences taught well in Aotearoa should be uncomfortable — because the history of this land is one in which Māori and other communities have faced injustice, and in which those injustices are not yet fully addressed. Mātauranga Māori offers frameworks for thinking about social change that go beyond Western political theory: the concept of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), of kotahitanga (unity in purpose), of utu (reciprocity across time) — these are not abstract ideas but working tools for analysing how power has been distributed and how it might be redistributed more justly. Social Sciences that centres these frameworks gives students the analytical vocabulary to name what they see in the world and imagine what could be different.
Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Support Materials
This handout is designed to be used alongside the broader unit resources available at Te Kete Ako handouts library. Related resources from the same unit are linked in the unit planner. All resources are provided — no additional preparation is required to use this handout in your classroom.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will engage with this resource to develop a decolonized understanding of Aotearoa's history — reading the past through the eyes of tangata whenua, examining primary sources critically, and understanding how colonisation continues to shape the present. This unit centres mana Māori as the starting point, not a footnote.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Students can analyse a historical source for perspective, reliability, and significance — including identifying whose voices are centred or absent.
- ✅ Students can explain how a specific historical event — such as the NZ Wars, land confiscations, or the Dawn Raids — connects to present-day inequities and Māori-led responses.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide annotated source analysis frames for entry-level access — guiding students through the OPCVL or SOLO process step by step. Offer extension tasks asking students to compare a colonial-era source with a contemporary Māori account of the same event, analysing how the historical narrative has been contested and reclaimed.
ELL / ESOL: Primary source language (particularly 19th-century English) presents specific challenges — pre-read sources with students and pre-teach archaic or specialist vocabulary. Allow students to express historical analysis in their home language first before translating to English. Bilingual glossaries support engagement without reducing intellectual demand. Some ELL students may bring first-hand experience of colonisation from other contexts — honour these as valid comparative perspectives.
Inclusion: Decolonized history can surface difficult emotions for Māori students encountering colonial violence and injustice in the curriculum for the first time. Create a trauma-informed classroom. Neurodiverse learners benefit from chunked tasks and clear analytical scaffolds. Ensure all students understand that the purpose of this unit is not guilt but understanding — and that understanding is the foundation of partnership and change.
Mātauranga Māori lens: Decolonizing history means more than "adding Māori perspectives" — it means recognising that the dominant historical narrative itself is a colonial artefact. Whakapapa is an alternative historical framework: tracing connections, obligations, and continuity across time. The NZ Wars were not distant events — their consequences live in land ownership patterns, economic disparities, and community structures today. Tino rangatiratanga — the right of self-determination — was not surrendered at Waitangi and has been asserted continuously through protest, legislation, and resurgence. Teaching this history is an obligation of Te Tiriti partnership.
Prior knowledge: Students benefit from foundational knowledge of the Treaty of Waitangi and its context. No specialist prior knowledge required for entry-level source analysis tasks — scaffolds are provided.
Curriculum alignment
- Aotearoa New Zealand Histories — Know: Understand that colonisation was a global process that had a specific and profound impact on tangata whenua in Aotearoa, and that Māori responses to colonisation have been continuous and varied.
- Do — Social Studies: Explore perspectives, use evidence to form conclusions, and share ideas — analyse primary sources, compare historical perspectives, and present findings.