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Ministry of Education New Zealand
Important

Draft curriculum content

This page is based on the draft Year 6 content for Technology, 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

In Year 6, students use a range of materials, ingredients, tools and techniques to design creative, functional, and sustainable solutions for real-world problems.

They start to create digital solutions. They learn to think logically by using sequences and loops in their instructions, refining their ideas through testing, feedback, and by considering people and the environment. Students develop their role as digital citizens.

Design, make and innovate#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • make something together for a specific person or purpose, for example, design a wearable accessory, thinking about who will use it and what they need
  • use digital tools to support what you are making together, for example, creating toy cars or board games, including the rules, board, and game pieces
  • think about sustainability and impact, where different materials and ingredients come from, how they’re transported, and how to dispose of them after use
  • work together to find out how pulley systems, gears and levers help us, for example, look at gears on a bike or garage doors
  • create logical, precise, efficient instructions to complete an everyday activity, for example, design a fitness circuit that repeats
  • discuss how people and organisations create digital media and tools for different purposes, and ask whether all information online is safe, accurate, fair, or trustworthy.

What the teacher will focus on#

Teachers continue to support students to solve real-world problems, while exploring creativity, function, and sustainability. Teachers help students design with others in mind, developing their digital citizenship and considering the effect digital tools will have on their process.

Students continue to evaluate how their choices impact people and the environment, and refine their designs based on testing and feedback. Students learn to select the best digital tools for creating digital solutions to problems. They will explore computer science concepts in greater depth, extending from thinking in clear and logical steps to sequences and loops in the instructions they write, and learning how to refine these to solve problems and make their designs more efficient.

By the end of Year 6, your child may be able to:

  • plan and explain how multiple parts work together in a technological system (like a light switch)
  • use tools and techniques to design, test and evaluate ideas from a real-life design brief, for example, a design brief for a food or clothing item to sell at a school Fiafia day
  • identify suitable materials and ingredients for a purpose, considering the impact of design choices, for example, combining ingredients to make a pet treat
  • continue to test, evaluate, and improve designs, for example, adjusting a toy’s moving parts so a pet can play safely
  • create clear, logical and efficient instructions that can be followed (written, drawn, or digital)
  • understand that digital hardware has specific functions and roles, for example, a computer keyboard is needed to input information
  • explore ways in which to understand big ideas more broadly, maintaining focus on what matters, rather than every detail (like maps).