Lenses into history - unpacking the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum

Using three lenses is like creating a kaleidoscope effect with possibilities for learning. Kaleidoscope image courtesy of instructables.

What lenses do you actively think about when designing your learning experiences for ākonga?

Katrina Ward

Sometimes it feels like we are looking through a kaleidoscope. Three mirrors work as a metaphor for the three lenses we put onto something, and suddenly there are fractals and moving parts everywhere… but I love that part. I love how the coming together of different lenses can suddenly create something really exciting.

We have been working with the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum with a number of schools and a lot of them have opted for some additional lenses to ‘triangulate’ their approach. The additional lenses I have been enjoying working with the most are the additions of digital fluency and learner agency. 

So what happens when these three lenses are combined?

The first lens is the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum. The lens of understanding the big ideas. Seeing the big ideas as big umbrellas that need to be over everything and then zooming in to the ‘knowing’ learning objectives aligned to specific contexts for each year level. Then we can adjust to a sharper focus to ensure that the ‘do’ of each activity hones into the subject knowledge and skills that are aligned with key subject-specific skills. An example of this is looking at cartography skills when looking at a map (geography skills), or focusing on source reliability and usefulness when looking at artifacts or photographs of the past (history skills). In the case of Burnside High, we have even designed a series of badge tasks to earn digital badges as ākonga complete skills-focused activities like ‘understanding bias’, ‘lateral research’ and ‘chronology’. 

The ANZHC lens is the main lens because it actively seeks to undo bias. This lens needs to be held in strong focus. When looking through this lens it is important to be conscious of the ‘rose tinted’ views that might come about if you neglect to meaningfully address the biases and power imbalances of history. This lens needs to be the ‘main lens’ into exploring local curriculum content for schools.  The ANZHC lens needs to be put on and put on again with regular editing processes to ensure that the big ideas can be ‘seen’ to be present in all of the activities/contexts that ākonga can explore. 

But those other two lenses also have an important role to play.

Let’s look at the lens of learner agency. 

For ākonga to be agents of their own learning they need to have choice about what they do, have choice about when they do it and also have choices for how they are assessed. They also need to be given opportunities to discuss and debate, explore and explain to show their understanding in different ways. The learner agency lens has been a fun lens to play with by adding ‘this or that’ choices throughout the unit design. It means ākonga can branch off and do different things and explore what interests them in addition to the ‘must cover’ content of the curriculum. It also means they can explore digital tools or play with paper-based ways to show their learning. Learner-agency as a lens means that no matter what is offered as content, you can give students multiple ‘ways in’ to the content which allows them to take more ownership of their learning. More ownership means more engagement and more engagement means more connection to the important ideas at hand. 

Learners as agents of their own learning also have more opportunity to be future agents of change. That’s why this lens is such a magic one. 

The third lens is digital fluency.

Have you ever heard of the term app-smashing? It is when you fluently combine apps to create something new. This is an end goal for students. Students can take a photo on their phone, edit it in one app, animate it another app and publish it on another app. Similarly students might create an infographic on canva and then load it as an image into thinglink and then upload audio to create a museum-worthy digital artefact of their own clever making. App-smashing processes give students an ability to be creators with technology - to see limitations and push things to their limits to create new things. It is highly engaging and ‘accidentally’ teaches them how to use a range of digital tools through focused and enabled discovery processes. We have really enjoyed designing some exciting tasks for ākonga to explore like creating a digital interactive map, experimenting with augmented reality and VR and creating a working school history app for real-life prototyping.

So there you have it. Three lenses. And just like a kaleidoscope creates new shapes and shifts in perspective, the new insights and the new learning can be magic. 

Exploring vocabulary with visuwords

Exploring primary sources with jamboard

Thinglink interactive map - pulse points lead to more thinglinks

Bringing understanding to life with interactive Thinglinks

This or that - creative writing or a timeline?

Nurturing a New Normal with Digital Fluency

Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai

Nurture the seed and it will grow

The context

Recently we celebrated a mid-way point with Frankton School to assess where we are, where we have come from and to offer an opportunity to shift the markers for where we need to go from here. It was a reflective meeting supported with data, teacher observations, senior leadership observations and wonderings and our own documentation and future recommendations. (Check out our process here). 

What Glynis Knox (the Assistant Principal) said in the meeting really resonated with us: “You know the change is here when it becomes the new normal.” 

She was referring to the fact that Year 3 students were making digital posters on Canva as if it ‘was no special thing’ and showcasing their work without it being difficult, hard or new. The digital fluency that was their annual target was becoming normalised, integrated, embraced and owned by the tamariki. It was a really special comment because it indicated that the changes were becoming embedded into the school’s identity, ‘this is the new way we do things’ and ‘this is us’. 

Meanwhile, in a Year 6 classroom, Connor Chesham’s students are exploring Anchor as a podcasting tool. His students are writing scripts, collaborating on the editing process, refining their scripts based on specific learning outcomes and even recording podcasts about wanting all teachers to be podcasting! The audio is so professional sounding and you can really hear the students’ confidence and pride in their mahi.

“We can really see the potential to be real-life journalists” says Connor. “The engagement has been massive.” And from the students, “It is so good to be able to hand in work outside of a book.”

In Whaea Jo’s class, the Year 4’s are starting their journey by creating brochures about Pirongia on Canva. In Miss Mooney’s class students are about to start an inference focus using hyper-journals. “The students have come a really long way and they realise that you can do amazing things even with relatively simple technology like Google Docs for example. They are accessing their learning easily and assuming navigator/driver models to help each other really naturally.” The peer support is echoed in other classes where the students are helping each other as ‘drivers and navigators’ and digital technology is not ‘scary or hard’. The range of tools used by classes is also growing to include iPad apps like MyStory and Puppetpals, interactive hyper-journals and interactive slides. Tayla Hobden’s Year 4’s are engaging with Google Slides using scavenger hunts to upskill with digital processes for reading groups. Megan Whitburn (Year 2 teacher) even has her students self-checking their learning on iPads with a personalised deck of Boom Cards and the Year 5’s in Holly Mason’s class are also investigating ‘best sentence’ models using magnetic poetry. Vickie Sue and Jess Weston are also exploring vocal recording for embedding writing and encouraging student reflections on learning. The learning is exciting and the energy is contagious.

The importance of the vision

This school had a thematic approach for the year. They chose a vision to work towards - ‘Digital Fluency’. The vision for change is anchored to a theme to make it easier to hold on to and to enable classroom teachers to use digital tools as a natural part of all learning programmes. 

Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and author of “The Willpower Instinct,” also endorses picking a “theme” for the year. That way, even if a particular habit doesn’t stick, the overarching intention will. This school chose ‘Digital Fluency’ and the team at Momentum Learning unpacked it into separate categories of leadership (leading with experimentation and collaboration), confidence (offering opportunities to grow together) and new digital tools (offering opportunities for staff to ‘play’ together to experience how students might explore new tools together with guidance). 

Doing something deliberate towards a goal or vision every day also resonates with James Clear’s Atomic Habits. He says, ‘Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.’ He, too, points out that nurturing a seed daily can grow the vision you want to blossom like the whakatauki that was chosen for this blog post.

Every day, do something that will nurture the seed.

With collaboration, clear intentions and the right kind of support, the seed will suddenly bloom and can become ‘the new normal’.