📚 Unit Plans → 🌍 Community Action Project → 📖 Lesson 6: Share and Advocate
Years 9–10 Social Studies

Share and Advocate — Telling the Story

Lesson 6 of the Community Action Project — ākonga turn their verdict into a public story and aim their advocacy at the exact part of the council or school that can make the change stick.

🕘 Lesson at a Glance | Te Hōtaka

Do NowSame story, three audiences⏱ 5 min1 · Where it landsThe right body, the right channel⏱ 15 min2 · Build the storyFrom verdict to narrative⏱ 20 min3 · Make the artefactThe piece that carries it⏱ 25 min4 · Deliver and askPresent, then send it for real⏱ 20 minExitThe ask, in one sentence⏱ 5 min

Lesson Overview | Tirohanga Whānui

A project that ends in the classroom ends. This last lesson is about making the change stick — and that means knowing exactly where the story has to land. Councils have a structure: in city and district councils a mayor leads decision-making, councillors vote, committees hold the detail, and regional councils hold a different patch again. Advocacy aimed at "the council" goes nowhere; advocacy aimed at the right committee, the right role, through the right channel, gets read. Each rōpū turns its signed verdict from Lesson 5 into a public story that stays honest to the evidence, builds the artefact that carries it, and delivers it with one specific ask. The project ends the way real advocacy does: with the story in front of the people who can act on it, and a request they can actually say yes to.

Learning Intentions | Ngā Whāinga Ako

  • Use the structure of city, district, and regional councils — and of our school — to aim our story at the specific body, role, and channel that can act on it.
  • Turn our signed verdict into a public story that stays honest to our evidence, hard question included.
  • Deliver the story with one specific, doable ask — and actually send it.

⚡ Do Now

⏱ 5 min

On the board: "You have 30 seconds to tell your project's story to: (a) a Year 7, (b) the principal, (c) the mayor. What changes each time? What must stay the same every time?"

  1. Write (3 min): One line for each audience — the thing you'd lead with.
  2. The constant (2 min): Underneath, answer the second question: what stays the same? Land it as a pair if you're stuck.

Teacher: the answer to "what must stay the same" is the lesson's spine — the evidence and the verdict. Tone, length, and lead change per audience; the truth doesn't. Collect a few leads for the mayor — they preview Activity 1's question of whether the mayor is even the right target.

Activity 1 · Where It Lands — The Right Body, The Right Channel

⏱ 15 min

What it is: "Tell the council" is not a plan. Councils have working parts: in city and district councils a mayor leads decision-making, councillors debate and vote, standing committees (transport, parks, community) hold the detail, community boards speak for a local patch — and regional councils hold a different set of responsibilities again, like public transport, water quality, and air. Schools have parts too: a principal, a board, a student council. Advocacy works when it lands on the part that owns the decision.

Run it

  1. Map the parts (6 min): Walk the structure with your own council as the example — who the mayor is, roughly how the committees split the work, whether your area has a community board, and what the regional council holds instead. Two minutes on the school's structure alongside it.
  2. Aim (6 min): Each rōpū answers in writing, using their Lesson 3 "right level" work: the body that can act on our ask is… · the specific role or committee is… · the channel that reaches them is… (a deputation slot, the annual-plan submission window, a letter to the committee chair, a board meeting agenda item, the school newsletter).
  3. Reality check (3 min): Pairs of rōpū swap answers and challenge: is that the part that owns it, or just the most famous name? Petitioning the mayor about a regional-council bus route misses — and now ākonga can say why.

Teacher: have your own council's website open for the committee names and the mayor and chairs — five minutes of prep, and it makes the map real rather than generic. Rōpū whose issue sits with central government aim at the local part of that machine: the local MP's office, or the agency's regional contact.

Activity 2 · Build the Story

⏱ 20 min

What it is: Advocacy is a story with evidence in it. The raw material is already written — the Lesson 5 verdict — and the credibility rule is simple: the public story must match the signed verdict. A story that hides the hard question gets found out exactly the way Lesson 5 taught.

Run it

  1. Four beats (12 min): Each rōpū drafts the story: the issue and who it affects (one or two sentences, from the Lesson 1 case) · what we did (the action, plainly) · what the evidence shows (the verdict, including "partly" or "too early" if that's the truth — and one line on what didn't work) · what needs to happen next (the bridge to the ask). Written for the audience chosen in Activity 1, at the length that audience would actually read or listen to.
  2. The honesty pass (5 min): One member checks each beat against the signed verdict and the evidence columns. Any sentence the evidence can't carry gets rewritten or cut.
  3. Say the lead (3 min): Each rōpū reads only its opening two sentences aloud to another rōpū: would you keep listening? Rework once if not.

Teacher: the counter-intuitive teaching point is that the failure line adds power — "our first working bee was rained off and we only reached half our target, but the before-and-after photos show the difference" is more persuasive than a spotless claim, because it sounds like people telling the truth. That's the through-line from the scrutiny lesson.

Activity 3 · Make the Artefact

⏱ 25 min

What it is: The story needs a body to travel in, and the right body depends on the channel from Activity 1. A committee reads a one-page summary with evidence attached; a deputation is three spoken minutes and one page left behind; a school community reads a newsletter piece with a photo; a foyer display works in headlines and images.

Run it

  1. Choose the form (3 min): Each rōpū picks the artefact its channel demands — not the one that's most fun to make. The four beats from Activity 2 are the content; nothing new gets invented at this stage.
  2. Build (18 min): Make it. Non-negotiables for every form: the strongest evidence is visible (the count, the photo pair, the reply) · the ask is stated exactly once, unmissably · the rōpū is identified (names, school, kaupapa) · anything about identifiable people or a community has their okay — the consent habit from Lesson 4 doesn't switch off because it's publication day.
  3. Proof pass (4 min): Swap artefacts with another rōpū for a cold read: can they find the evidence and the ask in ten seconds? Is every name and date right? Fix and finalise.

🪶 Mātauranga Māori and tikanga boundary (local handoff required): if the story involves mana whenua, a marae, or mahi done together on whenua or wai, the telling needs the same care as the doing: people and places named the way they've asked to be named, shared mahi presented as shared — and where a rōpū worked alongside mana whenua, offering them the story to check before it goes public is the correct courtesy. Don't publish someone else's part of the story for them.

You'll need: whatever the artefacts demand — paper and printing, slide access, display materials. Teacher: hold rōpū to the channel's real constraints (a deputation truly is about three minutes; a committee page truly is one page) — the constraint is where the editing skill gets learned.

Activity 4 · Deliver and Ask

⏱ 20 min

What it is: The project's last working act: deliver the story, land the ask, send it for real.

Run it

  1. Deliver (2–3 min per rōpū): Each rōpū presents its artefact to the class, who sit as the chosen audience — the committee, the board, the school assembly. The presentation ends on the ask, word for word as written.
  2. Audience response (1 min per rōpū): The "audience" answers two questions in role: what would make us say yes? and what would make us hesitate? One sharpening allowed before sending.
  3. Send it (last 5 min): Every rōpū puts its artefact into the real channel today — the submission uploaded, the letter in the office post, the newsletter piece emailed to the editor, the deputation slot requested, the display booked with the office. Log the send — date, channel, copy — as the final entry in the evidence journal.

Teacher: the send is the point — a project that ends at the classroom presentation taught presenting, not advocacy. Some asks will get a no, and some will get silence; the unit has already taught what to do with both: log it, follow up once politely, and let the evidence stand. Anything that comes back after the unit ends is worth two minutes of class celebration whenever it lands.

Exit · The Ask, In One Sentence

⏱ 5 min

Before they leave — and before the unit closes — each ākonga finishes these three sentences in their book:

  1. Our ask is… and we sent it to… (the specific body or role, and the channel).
  2. The part of the council or school that owns our issue is… (and how I know).
  3. If I told next year's class one thing about taking action in our community, it would be…

Teacher: sentences 1–2 check the lesson's civics landed — a named body, a real channel. Sentence 3 is the unit's real exit ticket; read a handful aloud to close, because ākonga summing up their own agency is the sound of this project having worked.

🎯 Curriculum Links | Te Hononga ki te Marautanga

This lesson's focus: The council-structure knowledge from Lesson 2, now used as a targeting map. Ākonga learn the working parts of city, district, and regional councils — the mayor leading decision-making, councillors, committees, community boards — and route their advocacy to the part that actually owns their issue, through a channel that part actually reads. The same statement anchors Lesson 2 and this lesson deliberately: first as understanding, now as the address book for advocacy.

Civics and Society — Core Connection (Phase 4 | Years 9–10)

"Structure and responsibilities of city, district, and regional councils. In city and district councils, a mayor leads decision-making."

📑 See the Community Action Project unit overview for the full curriculum alignment → — Social Sciences · Civics and Society · Phase 4 · Years 9–10 (statement pulled verbatim from the live Te Mātaiaho curriculum).

📦 Materials & Resources

Most of this lesson's material already exists — the signed verdicts, the evidence logs, and whatever the artefacts need.

  • From last lesson: every rōpū's signed verdict and evidence log — the story is built from them, not from memory.
  • Council map (Activity 1): your own council's website open on the board — mayor, committees and chairs, community boards, plus the regional council's patch. Five minutes of prep the day before.
  • Story frame (Activity 2): the four beats on a slide — issue · action · evidence · ask.
  • Artefact materials (Activity 3): paper, printing, slide access, display materials — whatever the chosen channels demand.
  • The real channels (Activity 4): the council submission page, the office email, the newsletter editor's address — confirmed before class so the send can actually happen in the room.

There is deliberately no video in this lesson — the material is the rōpū's own story and the real channels it travels through. If a rōpū is preparing a deputation, your council may publish recordings of community deputations at committee meetings; source and check one yourself before showing it.

📊 Assessment Framework

This lesson completes the unit's summative picture. The artefact and its delivery feed the rubric's Community Engagement dimension (authentic audience, respectful and accurate communication) and close out Action + Impact; the exit ticket adds the last evidence to Reflection + Next Steps. The assessment rubric on the unit overview is the reference for the whole arc.

What to look for, mapped to the learning intentions

  • Aimed advocacy (LI 1): in Activity 1, does the rōpū name a specific body, role, and channel — and survive the "is that who owns it?" challenge? Exit sentence 2 confirms it stuck per ākonga.
  • Honest story (LI 2): does the artefact match the signed verdict — including the hard question — or has publication day quietly airbrushed it? Check one beat against the verdict per rōpū.
  • A real ask, really sent (LI 3): is the ask specific and doable, stated once, unmissable — and is there a logged send (date, channel, copy) in the evidence journal by end of class?
Quick exit read: the three exit sentences tell you whether the civics targeting landed, and sentence 3 hands you each ākonga's own summary of what the unit taught them — keep a few for next year's class.
🚀 Extension Activities
  • The follow-up plan: the rōpū drafts the polite follow-up now — to send if the ask gets silence for three weeks — and diaries who sends it. Advocacy that follows up once, well, is advocacy that gets answered.
  • Deputation for real: a rōpū with a strong council-facing story requests an actual deputation slot at the relevant committee or community board. If it's granted after the unit ends, the three-minute talk is already written.
  • The handover pack: ākonga assemble a one-page handover for next year's class — the issue, what was done, what the evidence showed, what's still open — so the kaupapa can be picked up rather than restarted. Change that sticks usually outlives one class.
🔗 Unit Progression & Next Steps

This lesson closes the arc: the story is with the people who can act on it, and the ask is on the record.

  1. Lesson 1 — Choose an Issue: find a real community issue worth acting on.
  2. Lesson 2 — Research and Understand: get the full picture — evidence, sources, perspectives.
  3. Lesson 3 — Design a Response: turn understanding into a realistic plan.
  4. Lesson 4 — Take Action: do the mahi.
  5. Lesson 5 — Reflect and Evaluate: did it work, and how do we know?
  6. Lesson 6 — Share and Advocate (this lesson): tell the story and push for the change to stick.

After the unit: log any replies as they arrive and give them two minutes of class time — an answered ask, even a "no, because…", is civic participation completing its loop. The assessment rubric on the unit overview covers the summative wrap-up.

📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot

Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria

  • ✅ I can name the specific body, role, and channel our advocacy targets — and why that's the part that owns our issue. (LI 1)
  • ✅ Our public story matches our signed verdict, hard question included. (LI 2)
  • ✅ We sent our ask through a real channel, and the send is logged. (LI 3)

Differentiation for this lesson

  • Form fits the ākonga: the artefact menu carries the range — a rōpū of writers takes the committee one-pager, performers take the deputation, designers take the display. The four beats and the single ask are the same standard for all.
  • Language / ELL: the four-beat frame doubles as a writing scaffold; deliveries can be shared across the rōpū so no single ākonga carries the whole talk. Everyday kupu (rōpū, kaupapa, mahi) continue in use.
  • Audience nerves: the class-as-audience rehearsal exists so the real send isn't the first performance. For ākonga who find even that heavy, the artefact itself — sent with their name on it — is full participation.

Broader differentiation and the unit-wide framing live on the unit overview.