Scarcity & Kai
Introduction to Economic Concepts
📚 Learning Intentions
- Understand what scarcity means and identify examples in daily life.
- Connect scarcity to food availability and survival requirements.
- Recognize that scarcity forces choices and trade-offs in household spending.
✅ Success Criteria
- I can define scarcity and give three household examples.
- I can explain how scarcity affects food choices at the supermarket.
- I can identify a personal trade-off I've made when resources were limited.
👩🏫 Teaching Instructions
This week sets the foundation for the entire unit. Use the "empty shelf" images to trigger an emotional connection to the concept of scarcity before moving to the technical definitions.
Project images of empty shelves or drought-affected crops. Use Think-Pair-Share to surface feelings of anxiety or frustration.
Rotate through the vocabulary sort and pie chart activities. Focus on the 'Why' behind household budget choices.
Watch the Khan Academy video to formalize the economic terms introduced during the activities.
🚀 Haerenga Ako (Lesson Flow)
1. Hook: What is Scarcity?
What do you see when shelves are empty? How would this make you feel? What choices would you have to make? Students share stories of when they couldn't get what they wanted/needed.
2. Vocabulary Sort
Using the Vocabulary Sort Cards, students match terms (scarcity, abundance, trade-off, staple, innovation) with bilingual definitions.
3. Numeracy: Food Budget Pie Chart
Using the Food Budget Template, students estimate percentage spending on staples, protein, and 'treats'.
Kaiako Moves
- Ask: If prices went up 20%, what is the first thing your whānau would cut? That is your trade-off.
4. Literacy: Reflection
Personal writing using the Reflection Worksheet. Focus on the emotional and practical impact of missing out.
Differentiation
Provide sentence starters for writing; offer bilingual cards for the vocab sort to support ESOL/Reo learners.
🎯 Tahua Aromatawai (Assessment)
Mātainuku Evidence
- Completed Pie Chart with accurate percentages.
- Reflection paragraph identifies a specific trade-off.
Mātairea Support
- Oral explanation of the difference between 'want' and 'need' under scarcity.
📚 Ngā Rauemi (Resources)
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will engage with this resource to investigate the intersection of kai (food), culture, and climate — exploring how mātauranga Māori approaches to food production, preservation, and distribution offer powerful responses to contemporary food security and climate challenges in Aotearoa New Zealand and globally.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Students can explain how traditional Māori kai practices (maramataka, kūmara cultivation, rāhui) embody ecological knowledge and food security principles.
- ✅ Students can connect kai culture and climate scarcity to contemporary community action and food sovereignty movements.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide graphic organisers that map traditional kai practices to modern food security concepts at the entry level. Offer extension tasks asking students to research a specific iwi's traditional food system and evaluate its contemporary relevance, or to investigate a local food sovereignty initiative.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach domain vocabulary (food sovereignty, food security, kaitiakitanga, rāhui, maramataka) using visual diagrams and real-world examples. Draw connections to students' own cultural food traditions — these are valid entry points into the unit's themes. Allow oral or visual presentation of learning as alternatives to written tasks.
Inclusion: Kai is a universal human experience — all students have a relationship with food, seasonality, and sharing. Neurodiverse learners benefit from concrete, hands-on engagement with these concepts (e.g., examining a kūmara, mapping seasonal foods). Acknowledge diverse economic circumstances sensitively when discussing food security. Choice in how students demonstrate understanding (written, visual, oral) supports inclusive assessment.
Mātauranga Māori lens: The maramataka — the Māori lunar calendar — is one of Aotearoa's most sophisticated environmental data systems, encoding centuries of ecological observation about planting, harvesting, fishing, and weather patterns. Kūmara cultivation in pre-colonial Aotearoa was a feat of agricultural knowledge adapted to a new climate. Rāhui (temporary resource restrictions) is indigenous resource management — conservation before conservation. Kaitiakitanga frames the relationship between people and kai not as extraction but as reciprocal guardianship. These are not historical curiosities — they are living solutions to contemporary problems.
Prior knowledge: Students benefit from foundational understanding of climate change and food systems. No specialist mātauranga Māori knowledge required for entry-level engagement — the unit builds this knowledge progressively.
Curriculum alignment
- Place and Environment — Social Studies: Understand how people's management of resources reflects their values and their view of sustainability — and how mātauranga Māori frameworks provide models for sustainable resource management.
- Ecology — Living World: Understand how human activities and natural factors affect the distribution and abundance of organisms; evaluate the impact of changes on ecosystem health and food systems.