Kaiako Run-Sheet — WW1 & National Identity

Year 9 Social Studies. What to open, what to print, what ākonga do, and what evidence comes back. Everything linked here was checked and exists.

⚠️ Read this before you plan the week. The six phase pages are not six lessons. Each contains several teaching episodes. The unit’s own PHASES-NOT-WEEKS guidance says a Year 9 class needs roughly 10–14 substantial lessons across 6–10+ weeks. Depth is the constraint; calendar length is adaptable. Teach one episode per period and use the stop points below.

The arc

CAUSES → CHOICE → EXPERIENCE → CONTESTED LOYALTY → PEACE → MEMORY. The final inquiry about national identity only works once ākonga actually understand the war they are interpreting — which is why orientation is protected at the start.

The week at a glance

PhaseBig questionĀkonga produce
1 · Causes
~3 periods
What war are we actually studying — and why did it begin?Which-war sort · “It became a world war because…” · coloured Europe map · weighted causes
2 · Choice
2–3 periods
Why did Aotearoa go, and who decided?Identity Ledger entry 1 · “Would you go?” decision before and after evidence
3 · Experience
~3 periods
Whose war was it?Real-person dossiers · Total War systems map
4 · Contested loyalty
2–3 periods
Who was allowed to refuse?Decision hearing advising a Waikato whānau
5 · Peace
~2 periods
Who got to decide the peace?Negotiation with influence points · Versailles comparison
6 · Memory
~3 periods
Whose WW1 is remembered?Six-item museum curation · final judgement

Phase 1 · Episode 1 — “Which war? What world?”

Open the phase pageOpen the deckPrint for ākonga
The move that makes this lesson work. The unit says it plainly: do not begin with MAIN. Do not start with causes. Build a correct mental picture of which war this is first, or everything afterwards sits on a blur.

WALT — distinguish WW1 from WW2; identify the main sides and locate key countries and empires in 1914; explain why this became a world war.

1 · Diagnostic sortĀkonga sort into WW1 · WW2 · BOTH · UNSURE: 1914–1918 · 1939–1945 · Hitler/Nazi Germany · Kaiser Wilhelm II/German Empire · Austria-Hungary · Ottoman Empire · Allied Powers · Axis Powers · Trenches · Tanks · The Holocaust. The sheet tells them “do not guess silently: mark unsure when you are unsure.” Hold them to it — the unsures are your data.
2 · Repair the blurMake three corrections explicitly: WW1 Germany was the German Empire, not Nazi Germany · Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust and the Axis belong to WW2 · “Allies” appears in both wars, but the coalitions and governments differ.
3 · 1914 was modernTelephones, newspapers, electric trams, cars, cinemas, factories, railways, steamships, aeroplanes. Ask: what feels recognisably modern? what still feels distant? Cut this step first if time is short.
4 · World before EuropeWorld map — theatres, oceans, empires, dominions, colonies, troops, resources. Ākonga complete the stem “It became a world war because…”
5 · CloseBack to the WALT: can they say which war, when, and why “world” matters?

Evidence back: the sort sheet, and the finished sentence. Read the sentences — they tell you whether “world” landed as scale or as slogan.

Historical precision worth keeping right. Central Powers at the opening = German Empire + Austria-Hungary; the Ottoman Empire joins later in 1914 and Bulgaria in 1915. Early Allied side = British Empire, France, Russian Empire, Serbia, Belgium — with Japan (1914), Italy (1915), Romania (1916) and the USA (1917) layered in with dates. Don’t present the coalitions as fixed from day one.
Te reo in this lesson — the unit flags it as purposeful, “not decorative duplication”: he pātai / question · whakaaro / thinking · mātakitaki / view · kōrero / discuss · tuhia / write. Te Pakanga Tuatahi o te Ao is taught alongside the war’s other names.

The maps · what to print

✅ The maps exist. An earlier version of this page said they did not — that was true on 23 August 2026 and was fixed the same day. All of them are installed, rights-cleared and print-ready.

Europe — Europe 1914 map task: a labelled reference map, a Balkans detail, and a blank map that shares the reference map’s exact extent, so ākonga can transfer what they found. The blank is an SVG recoloured for print (white fill, dark borders) — print it at A3 if your copier allows; Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania get very small at A4.

The world — Why do we call it a world war?: this is the world-map handout that deck slide o9 asks for. A reference map of who fought worldwide, plus a blank Pacific-centred world map to print in landscape. Pacific-centred on purpose — every Europe-centred world map cuts the Pacific at the edge and drops Samoa off the sheet entirely.

⚠️ You must point to Samoa yourself. It is on the blank map, but it is about 2mm across at A4 and ākonga cannot pick it out unaided. The task text tells them so rather than pretending otherwise.

Whiteboard fallback, if the copier dies (20–25 min): draw a deliberately rough Europe yourself and say it’s rough. Build it live, naming each as you add it — Britain, France, German Empire, Austria-Hungary (a multi-national empire, not a country on today’s map), Serbia directly south of it, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Belgium (flag it now — it matters in Phase 2), Italy. Two colours for the sides, and a third mark for “not yet / neutral” — that third mark is the teaching point, not a footnote. Ākonga copy it with a legend. Check: cover the board — which two are the Central Powers, and where is Serbia relative to Austria-Hungary?

Using the deck

The deck carries a speaker note on every slide — press S to open presenter view. You do not need to write your own words. There are also per-phase presenter scripts in the unit folder (DECK-OPENING-SCRIPT.md and five more) whose slide IDs match the deck exactly.

Two practical cautions. The deck loads its slide library from a CDN, so it needs internet — open it before class. And around 30 slides say “PROJECT THE CARRIER” with a link out to NZHistory, Te Ara or Papers Past rather than an embedded image; most are permission-required, so click through in advance. One source is kaiako-supplied by design: the Papers Past excerpt on the Waikato press-framing slide.
Known stale text: the lesson-sequence and teacher-deck-map pages still print old slide ranges that a later addendum withdrew. Trust the deck and the phase pages over those ranges.

What this unit does not include

There are no minute-by-minute timings anywhere in the unit, and no answer keys. Both are largely by design — the evidence sorts, negotiations and curation tasks have no single correct outcome. The exception worth knowing: the which-war diagnostic has no key either, and is marked from the front off the deck.

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