Amesbury Digest - 21st March 2022

Tēnā koutou,

This week, Prime Minister Ardern and Minister Chris Hipkins announced the release of the finalised Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum. The new curriculum embraces the histories of all the people who live in Aotearoa New Zealand and encourages schools to develop a local curriculum that reflects the histories of their communities. You can find this new curriculum content here.

We are excited by the new Histories curriculum, and we are enjoying the current implementation of it in our learning programmes. The model of learning it uses - ‘understand, know, do’ follows a very similar approach to our inquiry learning approach at Amesbury, and fits well with our learning design. Given the wide ranging impact of Covid-19 on schools and kura, this new curriculum is not expected to be implemented in schools until Term 1 2023. However, we have implemented it into the first of our three inquiries this year, because we believe it is really important learning for our tamariki. We have always included learning around Te Tiriti o Waitangi into our curriculum, and it has been a main feature of our Term 1 learning at least every other year, so that tamariki build upon a base of learning as they move through the school. The new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories content has challenged us to take our learning around this topic further, and include a stronger element of geographical knowledge, both local geography and history, and also knowledge of the wider country.

For our first inquiry this year - Living History, the key overall understandings we are focusing on with tamariki are:

* We look to the past to help us make better decisions for the future (kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua).

* Aotearoa New Zealand history begins with Māori (tangata whenua) and we must take responsibility for ensuring that Te Ao Māori, tikanga Māori and Te Reo Māori are an integral part of our country’s culture.

* Historical recounts are stories that people tell about significant events. The story is always from the person’s perspective and other perspectives/voices may be missing. This also means that historical recounts can be different.

* Colonisation impacted the way Māori lived and we continue to see the impact of this.

* People who hold power have a lot of influence because they make the decisions and have the support. We see the impact of this in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. People who hold power need to be mindful of exercising their power for good.

* People migrate for a range of reasons.

* Place names are significant and have meaningful stories behind them.

The range of understandings explored with tamariki, and the extent to which these understandings are explored and developed, will depend on the age of the students.

This inquiry will finish in Week 2 next term. Hopefully, by then, we will be past the peak of the current Covid-19 outbreak, and we very much hope that parents and whānau will be able to come into school to share in celebrating our learning and see what we have been working on. In the meantime, ask your tamariki to talk about what they have been learning about around the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. You could ask them if they can tell you about Te Tiriti o Waitangi or about any stories or legends of local places around Wellington. For younger students, in Koru Hub, you could ask them about what a treaty is, or to tell you about any native birds or plants in this beautiful motu of ours.

Kia pai tō wiki - have a good week.

Ngā mihi nui,

Urs Cunningham