🤝 Week 1: Whanaungatanga & Awa Stories
Students establish a personal and cultural connection to their local awa through pūrākau (stories), mapping activity, and observing the catchment area.
Focus Question
What is our personal and cultural connection to our local awa?
Ngā Mahi - Week 1 Activities
1. Karanga & Hook (15 mins)
Activity: Opening karakia and mihi to frame the concept of kaitiakitanga. Show two contrasting photos of local awa (one healthy, one degraded).
- Discuss: "What differences do you see?"
- "Where would you rather swim/gather kai?"
- Identify signs of a healthy vs unhealthy awa
2. Pūrākau & Mapping (30 mins)
Activity: Share a local story or play a kaumātua interview clip about the awa's origins. Students sketch the catchment area.
- Label features: source, bends, mouth, tributaries
- Use te reo Māori terms: awa, manga, repo, puna
- Mark the awa's path nearest to home/school
3. Synthesis & Exit (15 mins)
Activity: Turn-and-Talk discussion followed by an Exit Ticket activity.
- Discuss: "How do we use this awa? How should we care for it?"
- Exit Ticket: Write one kupu (word) and one action on a sticky note
- Add to the class "Awa Board"
4. Media Anchor — Keeping Our Water Clean! (SciShow Kids) (10 mins)
Activity: Use this short clip to ground kōrero about awa health indicators before students complete transcript and mapping tasks.
- Pause and discuss: Which visible indicators in the clip help us judge whether a waterway is healthy?
- Transfer task: Students add one indicator from the clip to their awa map annotations.
4. External Resources
Explore More:
💡 Differentiation Strategies
- Scaffolding: Provide pre-labelled map features and sentence stems
- Extension: Research specific local industries using the awa
- Cultural connection: Connect to whakataukī: "Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au"
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
🌊 Kaitiakitanga this week — Whanaungatanga — the awa has relationships before it has data
This week the kaitiakitanga is whakapapa. Before ākonga measure anything, they find out who this awa is connected to: which hapū or community sit alongside it, what it is named and why, whose pūrākau it appears in. What this changes: the map they draw carries names and relationships, not just features. 🪶 A pūrākau belongs to the people who hold it — invite it, do not assign it, and if none is offered locally, use the awa's own name and what it tells you rather than substituting a story from elsewhere.
Te aronga o te wāhanga | Unit-wide aim (all six weeks)
Students will explore awa (river/water) as taonga, developing understanding of kaitiakitanga through water guardianship — connecting indigenous environmental knowledge with scientific and civic action.
Unit-wide success criteria
Assess this week against its own criteria above. The unit-wide criteria live once on the unit overview — they are not repeated here, so nobody marks the week against the wrong list.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Sentence starters for talking about a place that matters: “Our awa is important to us because…” Extension: find a second account of the same awa and note where the two differ.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach awa, kaitiaki, tūrangawaewae. A drawn or mapped response counts as a full response this week.
Inclusion: Some ākonga have no awa they feel connected to — that is normal and not a deficit. Offer any water they know: a stream, a drain, the sea, a tap. Do not require anyone to share whakapapa.