Two versions of this lesson. This is the full runsheet — every activity written out so you can teach it without prior preparation. 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.
Lesson 2 produced class data with spots that scored low. Today students work out why — and meet the idea that the cause is usually a system, not an event.
Te Whakatakotoranga | Run of show
Tirohanga Whānui | What this lesson is doing
This is the lesson where the unit stops being about birds and starts being about decisions. Manu need four things: kai, wai, cover, and safety from predators. Every one of those can be removed by something a person decided — where to mow, what to plant, whether to trap, where to put a carpark.
Students already have the tool for this from Lesson 1's map, and Lesson 2 gave them evidence of where it is thin. The move today is from what is missing to why it is missing, which is the same immediate-versus-structural distinction the rest of the unit depends on.
You'll need
- Cause & Effect Organiser — one per pair
- Interview Prompts — one per student
- The class data table from Lesson 2, still on the board or copied up
- Photos of local habitat change if you have them — the school grounds ten years ago is ideal
Do Now — Helps or harms 8 min
What it is: A sort that surfaces how often the same action does both.
Run it
- Put six things on the board (1 min): a mown lawn · a cat · a flowering kōwhai · a rubbish bin with a lid · a stand of pine trees · a stormwater drain.
- Pairs sort into helps manu / harms manu (4 min).
- Take the arguments (3 min): at least three of these will split the room. The drain holds water but also flushes pollutants; pines give cover but little food. When a pair disagrees, ask "helps or harms which manu?" — the answer usually depends on the bird.
The move to make: resist tidying this up. "It depends" is the correct answer and students should leave holding it.
Act 1 — What manu need, and what removes it 12 min
What it is: Students connect the four needs from their Lesson 1 map to the specific things that take each one away.
Run it
Build this table together. Give the need; ask students for the threat before you fill it in.
| Need | What removes it | Who decided that? |
|---|---|---|
| Kai — nectar, fruit, insects | Removing flowering and fruiting trees; spraying insects; lawn instead of understorey | ______ |
| Wai | Piping or draining wet ground; polluted runoff | ______ |
| Whakaruruhau — cover | Clearing dense shrubs; open mown space with nowhere to escape to | ______ |
| Safety | Cats, rats, stoats and possums; roads | ______ |
The third column is the lesson (4 min). Students fill it in. Almost every answer is a person or a group of people making a reasonable-sounding decision. Nobody in the list was trying to harm manu.
Introduced predators matter most and are least visible. Rats, stoats and possums are not native and were brought here by people. Students often name cats and stop; prompt for the ones they never see.
Act 2 — Cause, effect, action 15 min
What it is: Pairs build a chain for two threats, using their own Lesson 2 data as the starting evidence.
Run it
- Model one together (4 min) on the Cause & Effect Organiser. Take a low-scoring spot from the class table. Cause: it is mown lawn with no cover. Effect: small birds have nowhere to escape a cat, so they do not feed there. Action: plant a dense shrub group at the edge.
- Pairs do two of their own (9 min): one threat they can see on the school grounds, and one from the wider neighbourhood.
- Check the chains (2 min): circulate. The common failure is an action that does not match the cause — "pick up rubbish" for a predator problem.
Push one level down: when a pair writes "cats", ask what would have to change for that to stop being a problem. Answers about bells, keeping cats in at night, or trapping are all structural, and that is the register the assessment needs.
Act 3 — Prepare the interview 10 min
What it is: Students prepare to get a perspective they cannot get from the school grounds — someone who remembers the place earlier.
Run it
- Frame it (2 min): "Everything we know so far is from three weeks of looking. Who around here has been watching for thirty years?" Whānau, kaumātua, neighbours, the groundskeeper, a local restoration group.
- Read the prompts (3 min): the Interview Prompts sheet. The key question is the comparison one — what did you see here that you do not see now?
- Practise in pairs (5 min): one is the interviewer, one answers as themselves. The interviewer must write down one exact quote, not a summary. Swap.
Why an exact quote: the assessment poster in Lesson 7 requires evidence, and a person's own words are evidence. A paraphrase is the student's words about someone else's memory.
If you can bring someone in
A whānau member, kaumātua or local restoration volunteer visiting the class is far stronger than homework interviews, and it makes the manaakitanga real rather than theoretical. If you do, students should prepare their questions in advance and one student should be assigned to thank them properly.
Synthesise — Whose decision was it? 8 min
Run it
- Pairs pick their strongest chain (3 min) and write one sentence naming who would have to decide differently for the effect to change.
- Take five (5 min). Record the decision-makers on the board — the council, the school, cat owners, whoever plants the trees, the students themselves.
Hands forward to Lesson 4: that board list is where the class action comes from. An action the class can actually take will be one where the decision-maker is in the room.
Exit ticket 5 min
On a slip:
- The threat I think matters most for manu here, and one piece of evidence for it — from our count, our map, or the interview.
- The person or group who would have to decide differently.
- One question I want to ask my interviewee.
Reading these: question 1 without evidence means the student is reasoning from what they already believed. Question 2 answered with "everyone" means the structural idea has not landed yet — worth thirty seconds at the start of Lesson 4.
Ngā Huarahi Ako | Differentiation
Tautoko / Support
- Give the cause column pre-filled so the student works only on effect and action.
- Allow the interview to be done with a partner, or recorded as audio instead of written.
- Offer the sentence frame: "When ______ happens, manu ______, because ______."
Toitoi / Extension
- Take one threat and find out whether anyone locally is already working on it. Councils and community groups publish restoration plans.
- Argue the other side: who benefits from the mown lawn, and is that benefit nothing?
Te reo Māori
- Kupu: mōrearea (danger), whakaruruhau (shelter), taonga (treasure), kaitiaki (guardian).
- If your interviewee speaks te reo, record the quote in te reo and translate underneath — keep both.
Mātauranga Māori | Whakapapa, and why the interview matters
The interview is not a soft add-on to the science. In te ao Māori, knowledge of a place is carried by the people of that place, across generations — and a bird's decline is often noticed in kōrero long before it appears in a dataset.
If your interviewee is Māori and speaks about manu as taonga or about kaitiakitanga responsibilities, that is a knowledge system, not a sentiment. Record it as evidence and cite the person by name and with their permission, the same way you would cite any other source.
Hononga Marautanga | Curriculum
Human activity and technology impact the environment.
Students do not receive this statement; they demonstrate it. The third column of the needs table forces every threat back to a human decision, and the cause-and-effect chains make the impact traceable rather than general. The interview then adds the dimension observation cannot reach — change over time.
Sources and checking
- Introduced predators in Aotearoa (rats, stoats, possums) and their effect on native birds: DOC's predator information pages. Check current control guidance before advising students on any trapping.
- Local habitat change: your council or regional council's records, and any local restoration group. These are better sources than national summaries for a lesson about this place.
- Interviews are primary sources. Record who, when, and get permission before quoting.