English / Social Sciences / Inquiry • Years 8-12 • Ready to teach

Research Skills: Traditional and Digital Sources

Teach ākonga how to combine mātauranga Māori, oral history, primary sources, and digital research tools with stronger source judgement, ethical practice, and respect for knowledge holders.

Teaching use

Core inquiry lesson for research projects, social inquiry, local-history work, and cross-curricular investigation tasks.

Best for

Years 8-12 classes who need a stronger process for gathering, comparing, and ethically using both traditional and digital sources.

Prep level

Medium. Select a topic with both community knowledge and digital source material, such as Matariki, local environmental change, activism, or place history.

Next step

Use this before formal inquiry, report writing, oral history, or source-comparison assessment tasks so research habits are explicit from the start.

Use this lesson to build ethical inquiry habits

This lesson is free to teach as-is. If you want to localise the research question, strengthen the source pack, or generate differentiated recording templates, Te Wānanga can adapt the lesson while keeping the Aotearoa and tikanga framing visible.

  • Adapt the lesson around your rohe, iwi history, environmental issue, or local community question.
  • Generate scaffolded note-taking templates for younger or less-confident researchers.
  • Save class-specific versions in My Kete, then refine them in Creation Studio.
Adapt in Te Wānanga Open in Creation Studio View premium workflow

Teacher planning snapshot

  • Time: 1 extended lesson to launch a research process, or 2 lessons if students gather and compare sources in class.
  • Grouping: Whole-class framing, pairs for source collection, then independent or group synthesis.
  • Prior knowledge: None required, though students benefit from basic claim/evidence language.
  • Kaiako focus: Help students understand that traditional and digital sources each carry value, but they require different kinds of respect, checking, and use.

What to prepare

  • Choose a topic with both digital and community/traditional source pathways.
  • Decide whether students will simulate an interview, analyse provided oral material, or prepare real community questions.
  • Print or project the source-comparison and research-methods scaffolds.
  • Be clear about what knowledge can be shared publicly and what needs more careful handling.

Resources provided here

  • Research-methods scaffold for traditional and digital source gathering.
  • Inquiry and primary-source analysis supports.
  • Ethical prompts for working with knowledge holders and oral sources.
  • Explicit curriculum companion for planning and moderation.

Ngā Whāinga Ako / Learning Intentions

  • Understand that research in Aotearoa can draw on both digital/academic sources and mātauranga-based or oral sources.
  • Learn how to compare the strengths, limits, and ethics of different source types.
  • Use a clear process to gather, record, and synthesise information responsibly.

Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria

  • I can identify at least one traditional/oral source and one digital/written source for my inquiry.
  • I can explain how those source types are similar, different, and useful in different ways.
  • I can record and use information ethically, with clear acknowledgement of where knowledge comes from.

Curriculum integration is explicit

Use the linked curriculum companion to show how this lesson supports Te Mataiaho expectations around inquiry, evidence use, oral language, and culturally responsive knowledge gathering.

🔎 Inquiry 📚 Information literacy 🌿 Mātauranga Māori
Open curriculum companion Explore wider curriculum coverage

Research with integrity in Aotearoa

In Aotearoa, research can involve books, articles, archives, websites, pūrākau, interviews, local knowledge, whakapapa, and place-based observation. Students need to know that these sources are not all handled in the same way, even when each can be valuable.

This lesson helps kaiako teach inquiry as both rigorous and relational. Students should learn to respect knowledge holders, acknowledge mātauranga Māori carefully, and avoid treating all information as if it were interchangeable raw data.

Research process to teach explicitly

1. Clarify the research question

Help students define what they actually need to know, rather than searching too broadly from the start.

2. Map possible source types

Students list what digital, print, oral, local, and community knowledge sources could contribute to the inquiry.

3. Judge usefulness and ethics

Ask what permissions, acknowledgements, or cultural care are needed, and which sources are strongest for different parts of the question.

4. Record and synthesise carefully

Students gather key ideas, note source type and reliability, and then compare where the sources agree, differ, or add new perspective.

Suggested lesson sequence

  1. Hook: Present a topic like Matariki, a local awa, or an activism movement and ask what kinds of sources students might need to understand it properly.
  2. Source mapping: Build a class chart separating digital, print, oral, and local knowledge pathways.
  3. Model comparison: Compare one digital source and one oral or mātauranga-based source, asking what each contributes and what each cannot do alone.
  4. Research planning: Students map their own source plan using the scaffold below.
  5. Reflection: Students explain how they will avoid treating all evidence as interchangeable.

Support and extension

  • Support: Provide one pre-selected digital source and one oral/traditional source summary for comparison.
  • Extension: Ask students to identify where source conflicts reveal perspective rather than simple “wrongness”.
  • Adaptation: Turn this into the launch lesson for a local-history or inquiry project with interviews, archives, and field observation.

What to print, share, or open

  • Print the research-methods and source-comparison scaffolds.
  • Share a topic pack with at least one digital source and one traditional/oral source example.
  • Open the primary-source analysis framework if students will work with archive or historical materials.

Decide this before you teach

  • Whether students are planning real inquiry or practising the process with provided materials.
  • How you will talk about knowledge care, attribution, and what should not be overshared.
  • Whether a local topic, iwi story, or community issue makes the lesson more meaningful for your class.

Good progress by the end of lesson one

  • Students can name more than one valid source pathway for the same inquiry.
  • Students can explain why oral/traditional and digital sources should not be treated identically.
  • Students can begin planning an ethical and manageable research process.

🌍 Inclusion & Accessibility

ELL / ESOL support: Pre-teach key vocabulary before the lesson. Provide bilingual glossaries where available. Allow responses in home language as a first step.

Neurodiverse learners: Chunk instructions clearly. Offer choice in how students demonstrate understanding. Use visual supports and structured templates.

Scaffold & extension: Offer scaffold tasks and entry-level supports for students who need them. Extend capable learners with open-ended extension challenges.

Curriculum alignment