Two versions of this lesson. This is the full runsheet — every activity written out so you can teach it without prior knowledge of bird ID. If you already know the material and just want the shape of the week, use the one-page weekly planner instead. Same lesson, same outcomes, different amount of scaffolding for the kaiako.
The habitat map students start today is the base layer for the bird counts in Lesson 2 and the threat analysis in Lesson 3.
Te Whakatakotoranga | Run of show
Tirohanga Whānui | What this lesson is doing
Bird identification looks like memorising names. It is not — it is training students to notice specific differences and to say what they saw rather than what they assumed. That habit is the whole unit: in Lesson 2 they will count manu and the count is only worth something if their IDs are honest.
The second half moves from the bird to the place. Students map the school grounds for what manu actually need — food, water, cover, somewhere safe to nest. That map is used again in Lesson 3, when they work out what is missing or dangerous, and in Lesson 6 when they choose where their kaitiakitanga action goes.
You'll need
- Manu ID & Tally Sheet — one per student, used again in Lesson 2
- Habitat Map Template — one per pair
- Bird call audio. Search "NZ bird calls" — DOC and NZ Birds Online (Te Papa) both publish recordings by species.
- Clipboards for the outdoor section, and a plan for wet weather (see the note in Act 3)
Do Now — Which of these lives here? 8 min
What it is: A sorting task that surfaces what students already believe about local birds, including the wrong bits.
Run it
- Put six names on the board (1 min): tūī, kererū, pīwakawaka, kākāpō, sparrow, pūkeko.
- Students sort them (4 min): three columns in their books — I have seen this near my home or kura / I know the name but have not seen one / I do not know this bird. No talking yet.
- Quick show of hands (3 min): go through the six. The interesting one is kākāpō — most students know the name from conservation stories, and almost nobody has seen one, because they do not live in towns. Ask: "How do you know a bird exists if you have never seen it? Where did that knowledge come from?"
Watch for: students who put sparrow in the "do not know" column. Sparrows are so common they become invisible. That is worth naming now — the eye skips what it expects, which is exactly the problem a tally sheet fixes.
Act 1 — Five manu, five tells 15 min
What it is: Students build a working ID key from one distinguishing feature per bird, rather than a general impression.
Run it
- Frame it (2 min): write on the board — A tell is one feature you can check in two seconds and be sure. "Brown and medium-sized" is not a tell. "White tuft at the throat" is.
- Build the table together (8 min): students copy this into the front of their Manu ID & Tally Sheet. Give the bird, ask them to propose the tell from the photo before you confirm it.
| Manu | The tell — check this first | Where you are likely to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Tūī | Two white tufts at the throat, against dark feathers that flash green and blue in sunlight | Flowering trees — kōwhai, flax, banksia. Noisy. |
| Kererū | Very large, white breast with a sharp line against the dark head | Trees with fruit. You often hear the wingbeat before you see the bird. |
| Pīwakawaka | Fans its tail open into a half-circle and almost never sits still | Low branches and shrubs, often close to people. |
| Pūkeko | Deep blue body, red frontal shield above the beak, long red legs | Wet ground, drains, paddock edges. Walks more than it flies. |
| Sparrow | Small, brown, blunt beak, moves in groups on the ground | Anywhere people eat. Introduced, not native. |
- Test the key (5 min): in pairs, one student names a tell, the other names the bird. Swap after four. If they can do it without the table, the key works.
Kaiako note: keep the last row. Students often assume every bird they see is native. Naming the sparrow as introduced sets up Lesson 3, where introduced species become part of the threat picture.
Act 2 — Listen and decide 12 min
What it is: Identification by ear, and a first lesson in recording uncertainty honestly.
Run it
- Play four calls (6 min): one at a time, roughly 20 seconds each. Students write, for each: the bird they think it is, and a confidence word — sure, fairly sure, or guessing. No conferring.
- Reveal and count (4 min): after each reveal, count how many wrote "guessing" and were right, and how many wrote "sure" and were wrong. Both happen.
- Land the point (2 min): ask "If you were counting birds for real, what should you do with a 'guessing'?" The answer you are steering to: record it as unidentified rather than as your best guess. A count with honest gaps is more useful than a count that looks complete.
This is the lesson's ethical move. It matters more than the bird names, and it is the reason the Lesson 2 counts can be trusted.
Act 3 — Map the habitat 20 min
What it is: Students survey the school grounds and record what is actually there for manu, using four categories.
Run it
- Set the four categories (3 min): on the Habitat Map Template — kai (flowering or fruiting trees, open ground for insects), wai (any standing or running water, including drains and puddles), whakaruruhau (cover — dense shrubs, hedges, thick trees), mōrearea (danger — roads, carparks, open lawn with no cover, places cats hunt).
- Walk and mark, in pairs (13 min): students walk a fixed route you set in advance and mark each feature on the map with its category. Rule: mark only what you can see from where you are standing. No guessing what is around the corner.
- Back inside, add the count (4 min): each pair totals how many of each category they marked.
If you cannot get outside
Use a satellite image of the school printed at A3, or the school's own site plan. Students mark the same four categories from the image, then note one thing the image cannot tell them — usually whether the cover is dense enough, or whether the water is permanent. That limitation is a genuinely useful finding, not a fallback.
Watch for: pairs who mark only kai. Cover and danger are harder to see because they are absences and edges rather than objects. Prompt with "If you were a small bird and a cat came, where would you go?"
Synthesise — Where would you look first? 8 min
Run it
- Pairs choose one spot (4 min): using their own map, each pair picks the single place on the grounds where they think they would see the most manu, and writes two sentences: where, and which of the four categories made them choose it.
- Three pairs report (4 min): record their chosen spots on a class map. Where pairs disagree, ask what each pair saw that the other did not.
Hands forward to Lesson 2: the spot each pair chooses is where they will run their five-minute bird count. They are committing to a prediction now and testing it next lesson.
Exit ticket 5 min
On a slip, each student writes:
- One manu they expect to see at their chosen spot, and the tell they will use to confirm it.
- One thing their spot is missing that manu need.
Reading these: a student who names a bird without a tell has memorised, not learned. A student who says their spot is missing nothing has not looked at the mōrearea column. Both are worth a thirty-second conversation at the start of Lesson 2.
Ngā Huarahi Ako | Differentiation
Tautoko / Support
- Give the ID table with the tells already filled for tūī and kererū, so the student completes three rather than five.
- For the walk, pair with a confident mapper and assign the recording role rather than the spotting role.
- Accept the exit ticket spoken to you rather than written.
Toitoi / Extension
- Add a sixth manu from your own rohe and have the student work out its tell from a photo and a call, then teach it to the class.
- Ask: the four categories are useful but incomplete. What fifth category would you add, and what would you mark for it?
Te reo Māori
- Use the Māori names throughout — they are the names in use, not a translation exercise.
- Kupu for the map: kai, wai, whakaruruhau, mōrearea, nohoanga (habitat).
Mātauranga Māori | Before you teach the pūrākau
Pīwakawaka appears in the pūrākau of Māui's death, and it is often the story reached for in a bird lesson. Two things worth doing first.
- Ask locally before telling it. Versions differ between iwi, and the version your students' whānau know may not be the one in a published collection. If you have a relationship with local kaumātua or your kura's kaiwhakaruruhau, ask which version belongs here.
- Do not flatten it into a moral. The point is not "the fantail was naughty". Manu in pūrākau carry consequence and relationship, which is the same idea the map is teaching in a different register.
If you cannot source a local version in time, it is better to say so to the class than to substitute a generic one. "I do not know whose story this is here, so we will find out" is a good thing for students to hear a teacher say.
Hononga Marautanga | Curriculum
Humans are part of ecosystems and can change them through their actions (e.g. clearing land, growing crops, changing waterways, planting trees, restoring habitats).
Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Science · Phase 3 · Ecosystems · statement id 19813
The habitat map is where this lands: students record how the school grounds have already been shaped by human decisions — mown lawn, planted trees, sealed carpark, cleared drains — and what that has done to the manu that could live there. Lesson 6 returns to the same statement from the other side, when students change the place themselves.
Sources and checking
- Identification features and bird calls: NZ Birds Online (Te Papa) and Department of Conservation species pages. Both publish per-species recordings — use them rather than a generic bird-call compilation, which often mixes in overseas species.
- No population figures are used in this lesson on purpose. Bird counts move, and a stale number taught as current is worse than no number. If your class wants figures, get them live from DOC on the day.