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Important

Draft curriculum content

This page is based on the draft Year 1 content for Social Sciences, which is currently open for feedback. Schools are not required to implement changes until the consultation process is confirmed.

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Consultation for Year 0 to 10 draft curriculum content

The Social Sciences help students understand how people live together, make decisions, and shape communities so they can participate thoughtfully in society. In Years 0 to 3, students build foundational knowledge and start to explore important concepts, such as identity, family, and community.

Teaching is structured around 4 strands that focus on key areas of learning. In Year 1, these include:

  • History: migration to New Zealand, family stories, concepts about time and chronology
  • Civics and Society: belonging and community
  • Geography: location, scale, and words for describing places
  • Economic Activity: money and New Zealand’s system of currency.

History#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • talk about your own family stories, the stories of other groups in your area, and the stories behind place names in your area
  • look at family photos together and talk about the differences between the past and the present in their own experience or in the experiences of family members
  • read books and discuss stories and pūrākau from the past, including stories about influential people, and then practise retelling them in the right order
  • use time-based and time-related words, such as decade, century, year, before, after, yesterday, tomorrow, next
  • use words like memory, remember, past, present, story, pūrākau, myth, legend, fact, and record.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on migration to New Zealand, family stories, and concepts about time and chronology. For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • recognise that Māori are tangata whenua | first people of this land and have pūrākau | stories about their origins and arrival
  • understand that in the past, all our families journeyed to New Zealand, coming from different places and for different reasons
  • understand that history is made up of events that happened in a particular order and that there is change over time
  • understand that stories told about past events can be true, imagined, or a combination, for example, re-told as a fictional story
  • share family stories from the past to understand that their family is part of history
  • share stories about people who have played a big part in bringing about change, for example, Jean Batten’s contribution to aviation
  • use time-related words when telling stories about the past.

Civics and Society#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • talk about the groups they belong to and how they show they belong to these groups, for example, through greetings, activities, songs, or clothing, flags, or jewellery
  • discuss different flags you see in your community, what they represent, and why people fly them, and then create a flag that uses symbols that represent your family
  • read books about, or attend, different cultural or other celebrations and discuss the different ways these groups show they belong
  • use words like group, belonging, and symbols.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on the concepts of belonging and community. For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • identify some of the groups that they and others belong to, for example, family, their class at school, iwi
  • talk about how being in a group makes them feel and shapes the experiences they have, for example, at home or at school
  • identify some of the symbols, greetings, and uniforms people use to express the fact that they belong to a particular group
  • understand that flags are symbols for nations
  • identify the New Zealand flag and what each of its parts symbolises, for example, the stars symbolise the Southern Cross and our location in the Pacific.

Geography#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • play games where children have to move north, south, east, and west
  • play games like Battleship to help them understand coordinates
  • use different maps – for example, paper maps, globes, or online maps – to find New Zealand, and try to find local natural features, like maunga | mountains, or awa | rivers, and structures like bridges, monuments, towns, or farms
  • ask your child to hide something at home, and then:
    • ask them to draw a simple treasure map, using symbols for features like trees, buildings, or furniture, and an X for the treasure
    • follow their map to see what they have hidden.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on concepts about location, where places are, and scale, how big they are, and on the words we use to describe places. For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • use a map or globe to find New Zealand, identify the main islands, and find where they live
  • use simple keys, symbols, and colours to identify features on a map, for example, mountains, rivers
  • create simple maps
  • use simple geographical terms to describe features of the local landscape, including both:
    • physical features, for example, hills, streams
    • human features, for example, towns, marae
  • compare their local landscape with other landscapes in New Zealand and around the world, for example, deserts, tropical forests
  • give examples to show the difference between urban and rural
  • understand that people can feel a deep connection to the land where they live
  • understand that people share their knowledge about the land and its features through stories and observations, for example, place names, pūrākau.

Economic Activity#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • use the Reserve Bank website to investigate coins and notes and talk about their different features, such as colour, bird and historical figure, as well as what each one is worth
  • draw replicas of each of the New Zealand coins, that you can use to make money for an imaginary shop.

Coin specifications and images by denomination – Reserve Bank

Banknotes in circulation – Reserve Bank

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on money and New Zealand’s system of currency. For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • recognise that the currency of New Zealand is made up of coins and notes
  • identify the monetary value of various coins and notes
  • sort coins and notes in order of their monetary value, for example, from a 10-cent coin to a $10 note.