📚 Unit Plans → 🌍 Y8 Systems Thinking Unit → 📄 Design a System Template
Years 7-8 Tikanga-a-Iwi / Social Sciences

Y8 Systems Thinking • Society Design Launch • Resource 5.1A • Ready to print

Design a System Template

Use this canvas to design one part of your society. Your system should have a clear purpose, protect people and place, respond to problems, and improve after feedback.

Ingoa / Name
Akomanga / Class

Best for

Lesson 5.1 and the next design-build lessons in the Y8 Systems Thinking unit.

Kaiako use

Print one copy per design team or ask each student to complete their own version before team negotiation.

Ākonga use

Fill every section with short notes, diagrams, arrows, and decisions. Be specific enough that another group could test your system.

Linked next step

Use this template with the collaboration framework and rubric, then revise the design after peer critique.

Mātauranga Māori lens

Use whakapapa to notice relationships, manaakitanga to protect people's dignity, kaitiakitanga to care for place, and mauri to ask whether the system helps life and wellbeing. If your class connects this work to local iwi knowledge or place-based tikanga, follow kaiako and local guidance carefully.

Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions

  • We are learning to design a social system with a clear purpose, roles, rules, rights, and responsibilities.
  • We are learning to show how parts of a system connect through relationships, feedback loops, and consequences.
  • We are learning to test whether a system is fair, sustainable, and responsive to people and place.

Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria

  • I can explain the problem my system is designed to solve.
  • I can map people, roles, rules, resources, and feedback loops in my system.
  • I can use a stress test to identify a weakness and improve the design.

Curriculum alignment

This template supports social inquiry, systems thinking, and collective action in Aotearoa New Zealand contexts.

  • Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 3 (Years 7–8) · Civics and Society (Knowledge): “A constitution sets out the rules for how a country is governed.”
  • Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 3 (Years 7–8) · Civics and Society (Knowledge): “Types of government include parliamentary democracy (e.g. New Zealand), monarchy (e.g. Tonga), dictatorship (e.g. North Korea), and federal democracy (e.g. Australia, United States).”
  • NZC (2007) · Social Studies · Level 4: “Understand how formal and informal groups make decisions that impact on communities.”
  • NZC (2007) · Social Studies · Level 4: “Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges.”
  • Science systems connection: Students use system models, relationships, and feedback loops to reason about human and environmental consequences.

Design challenge

Your team is designing one system for a new society. It might be a decision-making system, resource-sharing system, conflict-resolution system, learning system, environmental care system, health and wellbeing system, or another system your team can justify.

A strong system is not just a list of rules. It explains who is involved, how decisions happen, how harm is repaired, how feedback changes the system, and how the system protects people who might otherwise be left out.

1. System purpose

Problem: What problem, need, or opportunity is your system responding to?

System name: What will your team call this system?

Purpose: What should this system make possible for people, place, and future generations?

2. People, roles, and voices

List the people or groups affected by this system. Then show how each group has a voice, responsibility, or protection.

People / groups

Roles / responsibilities

How they are heard

Prompt: whose voice is easiest to ignore, and how will your system prevent that?

3. Rules, rights, and responsibilities

Choose three to five rules. Each rule should connect to a right or responsibility, not just control behaviour.

Most important right your system protects:

Most important responsibility your system expects:

4. System map

Draw the system. Include people, resources, decisions, rules, feedback, and consequences. Use arrows to show relationships.

Add at least one label for whakapapa or relationships, one label for care of place, and one label for feedback.

5. Feedback loop and accountability

How will the system notice when something is not working? Who receives feedback, who responds, and what can change?

Repair process: If harm happens, what does your system do before punishment is considered?

6. Stress test

Choose at least two scenarios. Predict what your system would do, then identify one weakness.

  • A powerful group tries to change a rule so it benefits them more than others.
  • A scarce resource must be shared after a storm, drought, or supply problem.
  • A new person or group arrives and does not know the system yet.
  • Someone breaks a rule because their basic needs were not being met.
  • The system creates an unintended environmental consequence.

Scenario response:

Weakness found:

7. Redesign decision

After your stress test or peer critique, what will you change? Explain why the change makes the system fairer, more sustainable, or more responsive.

Evidence or feedback that shaped this change:

Entry, on-level, and extension pathway

Entry

Name the problem, list the people involved, write three rules, and draw a simple map with arrows.

On-level

Complete every section, include one feedback loop, and revise the design after a stress test.

Extension

Compare your design with a real system in Aotearoa, then explain one trade-off or unintended consequence.