Years 9–10 | Kete Whakataki — Starter Pack

Lesson 1: Welcome to High School & Secondary Success

Learning to operate in a new place — reading a week, knowing who to ask, and noticing who the building works for.

Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions

WALT: I can navigate my week — timetable, rooms, and what to do when I am lost.

WILF: You can read your own timetable out loud without help, name the right person for three different problems, and point to one part of this school that is harder for some students than others.

Whakataukī | Traditional Wisdom

“He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.”

What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.

Te Whakatakotoranga | Run of show

  1. Do Now — Three things that could go wrong 8 min
  2. Act 1 — Read the week 15 min
  3. Act 2 — Who do you ask? 15 min
  4. Act 3 — Who is this place easy for? 15 min
  5. Synthesise — The building is not the school 8 min
  6. Exit ticket 4 min

Tirohanga Whānui | What this lesson is doing

Almost everything a new Year 9 is actually worried about in week one is logistical. Being late. Being in the wrong room. Not having the right book. Not knowing where to eat, or who to sit with, or what happens if you need the toilet during a test. None of that is trivial to them, and a lesson that skips it to talk about values has not earned the right to.

So this lesson does the practical work first and takes it seriously. Then it turns the same skill outward: if you can now read this place, notice that it is easier for some people than others. That move — from I can navigate it to who is it built for? — is real social sciences thinking, and it is far more useful in week one than being asked to share a feeling.

You'll need

  • A copy of each student's actual timetable. This lesson does not work with a generic one.
  • A map of your school, or the class making one — either is fine, and drawing it is better.
  • The real names and roles of the people students would go to: form teacher, dean, counsellor, office staff, learning support, the person who deals with lost property. Names, not titles.
  • Sticky notes or scrap paper for the private written tasks.

Before you teach this

Everything in this lesson is written down before it is said, and most of it stays private. That is deliberate. Week one is the worst possible time to ask a fourteen-year-old to disclose something in front of thirty strangers, and a lesson that does it will be remembered for the wrong reason. Whanaungatanga in this lesson is built by doing something useful together, which is how it is actually built.

Do Now — Three things that could go wrong 8 min

What it is: A private written opener that surfaces the real worries without anyone having to admit to one.

Run it

  1. Set it up (1 min): "Not about you. About a Year 9 in general. Write three things that could go wrong for them in the first fortnight."
  2. Write privately (3 min): on paper, unnamed. The third-person framing matters — it lets a student write their own fear without owning it in the room.
  3. Collect and read some out (3 min): gather them, shuffle, read six or seven aloud yourself. Students hear their own worry in someone else's handwriting, which does the reassuring work without a single person having to speak.
  4. Sort them (1 min): as you read, put each on the board under knowing where, knowing who, or knowing what happens if. Almost every one fits. Those are the three acts of today's lesson — say so.

Act 1 — Read the week 15 min

What it is: Timetable literacy, treated as a skill rather than assumed. Most students have never had to read one before.

Run it

  1. Decode it together (4 min): put one timetable on the board and read it out loud — what the codes mean, how rooms are numbered, what a line or option column is, where the week rolls over if your school runs a two-week cycle.
  2. Quickfire, in pairs (6 min): partners quiz each other from their own timetables. "Where are you Tuesday period 3?" "What do you need for Thursday morning?" "Which day do you have PE and what does that mean you carry?" Ten questions each. Speed is the point — fluency, not comprehension.
  3. Find the pinch point (3 min): each student finds the hardest move in their week — the room change with the least time, or the day with the most gear. Write it down. Ask what would make it easier; the answers are usually practical and doable.
  4. Walk it if you can (2 min): if the pinch point is a room change, and you have the time, go and walk that route. Ten minutes of walking beats an hour of reassurance.

Two things worth catching here

Some students will not be able to read the timetable at all and will hide it well. The pair quickfire is designed so you can hear that happening rather than have to ask. Second, a student whose pinch point is "I do not have the gear for Thursday" has told you something important without meaning to — follow it up quietly afterwards, not in the room.

Act 2 — Who do you ask? 15 min

What it is: Students build a problem-to-person directory for their own school. The output is genuinely useful and they keep it.

Run it

  1. Give the problems (3 min): use the table below. In groups, decide who you would actually go to for each — by name where the class knows it.
  2. Fill the gaps (5 min): the rows nobody can answer are the valuable ones. Those get found out — from you, from the office, or as a task for tomorrow.
  3. Write the card (4 min): each student writes their own version, small enough to keep in a pencil case or photograph on a phone. Their form teacher's name and room at the top.
  4. Test it (3 min): call out three problems at random; students point to the name on their own card. If they have to think, the card is not finished.
Problem-to-person — fill in the names for your school
If this happens…Who do you go to?
You are lost and the bell has goneAny adult. Being late is smaller than being lost.
You left your bag on the bus
You do not understand the work and did not want to say so in class
Someone is being cruel to you or to someone else
You feel unwell during a test
You cannot afford something the class needs
You are going to be away for a tangi or a family reason
You want to change an option subject

Two rows carry more weight than the others: the one about affording things, and the one about tangi. Answer both plainly and without fuss, because the students who need those answers are the least likely to ask.

Act 3 — Who is this place easy for? 15 min

What it is: The turn outward. Students apply what they have just learned about navigating the school to the question of who the school is built for.

Run it

  1. Map it (5 min): groups sketch the school — buildings, field, canteen, toilets, office, the places people gather at interval. Rough is fine.
  2. Mark it up (5 min): on the map, mark places that are easy and places that are hard — and for whom. Prompt with real cases: someone new this term; someone using a wheelchair or on crutches; someone with no money for the canteen; someone who does not want to be seen at interval; someone whose first language is not English.
  3. Compare maps (3 min): groups will disagree about the same spot. That is the finding — the same place is genuinely different depending on who you are.
  4. One change (2 min): each group names one change that would make one hard place easier, and who they would have to ask to make it happen. Real ones, not fantasy ones.

Keep it about the place, not about people in the room

The prompts are all third-person and hypothetical on purpose. If a student volunteers their own experience, take it seriously and move on quickly rather than dwelling — this is week one and they have just told thirty people something. Do not build the plenary around it.

Synthesise — The building is not the school 8 min

Run it

  1. Back to the whakataukī (3 min): read it again. Point out what today actually showed — the timetable and the map are just paper and buildings. Every single problem on the Act 2 card was solved by a person. That is not a nice sentiment; it is the finding of the lesson.
  2. The one thing to remember (3 min): if you know one name, you can find every other answer. Ask each student, silently, to check they have that one name written down.
  3. Forward link (2 min): "You can navigate this place now. Next lesson: the part of your life here that is online, and what follows you out of it."

Exit ticket 4 min

Private, on paper, handed in: one thing you know now that you did not know this morning, and one thing you still do not know.

The second half is the one to read carefully. It is a list of what to fix this week, written by the people who need it, and it costs a student nothing to admit on paper what they would never raise in the room.

Ngā Huarahi Ako | Differentiation

Tautoko / Support

  • Pre-highlight one student's timetable with the room numbers circled so the Act 1 quickfire is decoding, not searching.
  • Give the Act 2 card partly filled — form teacher and office already written in.
  • Accept the exit ticket as a drawing or a single word. "Toilets" is a complete answer.
  • For a student new to English, pair for Act 1 with someone who shares their language if you can, and make the map in Act 3 the primary task — it needs no writing.

Toitoi / Extension

  • Turn the Act 2 card into a one-page guide for next year's Year 9s. Give it to the dean. It is a better document than most schools have.
  • In Act 3, work out why a hard place is hard. Was it designed that way, did it happen by accident, or did it change over time? That is the difference between a complaint and an analysis.
  • Count how many of the Act 2 problems are solved by the same one or two people. What does that tell you about how the school actually runs, as opposed to the organisation chart?

Te reo Māori

  • Kupu: whanaungatanga · manaakitanga · tuakana–teina · kaiako · ākonga · wāhi (place) · tangi.
  • Tuakana–teina is the practical one here: an older student who knows the place is worth more than any map. If your school has a buddy system, name it as tuakana–teina and say what it means.

Mātauranga Māori | Manaakitanga is a property of a place

Manaakitanga usually gets taught as something a person does — being welcoming, being kind. It is also something a place either does or does not do, and that is the version this lesson can actually demonstrate. A school where a lost student is helped before they are told off has manaakitanga built into it. A school where you have to already know how things work in order to be all right does not, however friendly the individual staff are.

Act 3 makes that measurable, which is the point. Students are not asked whether the school feels welcoming; they are asked to find where it is easy and where it is hard, and for whom. That is manaakitanga treated as a design question rather than a sentiment.

Worth saying plainly, and without making a lesson of it: for many Māori and Pasifika whānau, school has historically been a place of exclusion rather than welcome, and that is not ancient history. If a student's map is more critical than you expected, they may be reading the place accurately. Take the map seriously.

Hononga Marautanga | Curriculum

Places are experienced differently by different individuals and groups depending on: inclusion (e.g. community spaces, affordability); exclusion (e.g. policies and practices, gentrification).

Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 4 · Geography · statement id 14225

Act 3 teaches this statement with the one place every student in the room has direct evidence about. Inclusion and exclusion are usually taught through a distant case study; here students map affordability, access and belonging in a building they are standing in, on their first week of experiencing it. A transition lesson and a geography-of-place lesson turn out to be the same lesson, which is why this unit is worth more than a pastoral welcome.

Sources and checking