🌿 Week 4: Kaitiaki Actions & Planning
Students select a realistic environmental action to improve the health of their local awa. They develop detailed plans, assign roles, and draft educational posters to spread awareness.
Focus Question
What realistic action can we take to help our local awa?
Ngā Mahi - Week 4 Activities
1. Review & Decision (20 mins)
Activity: Revisit the action wall from Week 3. Use a feasibility check (time, cost, safety, impact) to select one class or group action.
- Quick-vote on top 2-3 ideas
- Apply feasibility check using a T-chart
- Note which data from Week 2 supports this action
2. Planning & Logistics (15 mins)
Activity: Complete the Action Mini-Checklist to define the "How".
- Set roles: project leads, recorders, evidence-gatherers
- Identify gear needed: gloves, bags, planting tools, clipboards
- Check permissions: Do we need council or school board approval?
3. Poster Drafting (25 mins)
Activity: Use the Poster Planner to draft an educational poster for the community.
- Set a clear message and "Call to Action" (CTA)
- Include at least one data point from Week 2 fieldwork
- Add a quote if you have interview findings
4. Media Anchor — Turning the Tide, Episode 2: Mātauranga-Led Restoration (RNZ) (10 mins)
Activity: Analyse one restoration case to refine feasibility decisions and poster calls-to-action.
- Pause and discuss: Which restoration step from the clip is realistic for our local awa context?
- Transfer task: Add one concrete action from the clip into your Action Mini-Checklist.
💡 Differentiation Strategies
- Scaffolding: Provide sentence stems for the poster: "Help our awa by..."
- Support: Offer a simplified action checklist for smaller tasks
- Extension: Draft a formal letter to a local councillor proposing the action
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
🌊 Kaitiakitanga this week — A kaitiaki plan is one you can actually keep
This week the kaitiakitanga is manaakitanga in practice. Kaitiakitanga is a duty that continues after the unit ends. What this changes: each plan must name who keeps doing it, how often, and how they would know it is working — an action nobody is responsible for is a wish.
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: A planning template with the constraint boxes already listed, so ākonga fill rather than generate. Extension: cost the action and identify who would need to approve it.
ELL / ESOL: Action verbs modelled aloud — plant, measure, monitor, report — with a physical example of each.
Inclusion: Every ākonga owns a named part of the plan. Roles that involve no talking are real roles: recording, measuring, photographing, timekeeping.
Kaitiakitanga places the obligation on the community, not on an individual hero. That is why this week's plan names who is accountable and how often — a guardianship claim with no named person and no frequency is not yet an obligation. Ākonga are practising kaitiakitanga here; the page does not appoint them kaitiaki of anyone's awa.
Curriculum alignment
- Science — Ecosystems: Biotic and abiotic factors in ecosystems can affect distribution and abundance of organisms.
- Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 2 (Years 4–6) · Geography (Knowledge): “People interact with and use places, resources, and environments for personal, social, cultural, and economic reasons.”
- NZC (2007) · Social Studies · Level 3: “Understand how people make decisions about access to and use of resources.”