🌟 Big Ideas
- Ecosystems are networks of interdependent relationships between living things and their environment.
- Kaitiakitanga concerns locally held relationships, authority, and obligation at place.
- Scientific evidence and locally authorised mātauranga may inform the same decision without becoming interchangeable.
🎯 Learning Outcomes
- Describe components and interactions in a local ecosystem.
- Construct and interpret food chains and food webs.
- Explain human impacts and propose kaitiaki actions.
- Collect, organise, and present field data ethically.
📖 Lesson Sequence
1. Kaitiakitanga & Local Ecosystems
Separate ecosystem evidence from local authority and unknowns, then survey an accessible site.
2. Food Chains & Food Webs
Model energy flow and interdependence from the class field evidence.
3. Human Impacts & Kaitiaki Action
Investigate a local change and draft an evidence-based, permission-aware action plan.
📊 Assessment
- Field Journal: Ongoing evidence of observation and reflection.
- Food Web Analysis: Demonstrating understanding of relationships.
- Action Proposal: Application of evidence with a measurable action and permission pathway.
Assessment boundary: use the current edition's evidence, food-web reasoning, feasibility, and permission criteria. Do not assess identity, cultural knowledge, or learner disclosure.
🛠️ Resources & Notes
Student Resources
Teacher Notes (PD)
- Confirm the site's access, safety, privacy, and decision-maker before teaching.
- Use local names, histories, tohu, or tikanga only when the kura supplies an approved source.
- Use the current edition's published evidence, food-web, feasibility, and permission criteria.
Curriculum alignment
"Ecosystems are composed of biotic and abiotic factors, which interact with each other and are important to the survival of organisms."
"Energy transfers and nutrients flow through food chains and food webs, through producers, consumers, and decomposers, and including processes such as photosynthesis and respiration."
These Phase 3 statements are taught in the current complete edition linked above.