Resources
Assessment and professional support
This section contains different approaches to understanding learning progress. It includes
information about e-asTTle.
For an overview of assessment, see
Directions for Assessment in New Zealand, a report by Michael Absolum, Lester Flockton,
John Hattie,
Rosemary Hipkins, and
Ian Reid (also available as a Word or PDF file).
In 2007, ERO published two reports on schools’ effectiveness in the collection and use of assessment:
Support for teacher members includes a quarterly newsletter, an events calendar, teacher resources, links, and an online forum.
Support for New Zealand geography teachers.
Global resources for teachers.
Geography resources for teachers and students.
The world in 3D.
GIS software and products
Teaching resources on water and the atmosphere.
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Resourcing ideas
The following references will help you to plan teaching and learning activities for geography.
Services to Schools supports educators by providing professional learning, advice, and quality resources to inspire and inform student learning, foster their love of reading, and develop their knowledge of culture and heritage.
The On Disk library of audiovisual teaching resources for secondary schools, includes over 40 titles covering a range of subjects, with more titles to be added.
Search the geography topics.
This section of Tāhūrangi contains practical resources and support for teaching and learning in te ao tangata | social sciences.
It includes PDFs of titles in the Ministry of Education series
Building Conceptual Understandings in the Social Sciences (BCUSS). Titles:
- Approaches to Building Conceptual Understandings
- Approaches to Social Inquiry
- Being Part of a Global Community
- Belonging and Participating in Society
Although the BCUSS series is designed to help teachers of levels 1-5, it is strongly recommended for senior social science teachers.
Students can go to this website to find useful, accurate, online information. Librarians from all over New Zealand are available each weekday between 1 pm-6 pm to help students search online. To use AnyQuestions, students must be attending a New Zealand primary, intermediate, or secondary school or being home-schooled.
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Ministry of Education websites
As well as the HTML version of The New Zealand Curriculum, this interactive site offers a variety of support and strategies, news updates, digital stories of schools’ experiences, and archived material relating to development of the curriculum.
This site includes a translation into English of the main sections of the draft marautanga. Only learning levels 1, 4, and 6 have been translated in the learning areas.
Ka Hikitia – Accelerating Success 2013–2017 is a strategy to rapidly change how the education system performs so that all Māori students gain the skills, qualifications and knowledge they need to enjoy and achieve education success as Māori.
This Ministry of Education professional development strategy focuses on improving outcomes for Māori students in English-medium schools. This strategy supports four main projects:
Find out about the action plan 2020-2030, including progress updates.
Find out about the action plan 2020-2030, including progress updates.Key Competencies Online
This section of New Zealand Curriculum online offers specific guidance to school leaders and teachers on integrating the key competencies into the daily activities of the school and its teaching and learning programmes.
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Other government websites
BES is a collaborative knowledge-building strategy designed to strengthen the evidence base that informs education policy and practice in New Zealand. See in particular:
Effective pedagogy in social sciences/tikanga ā iwi: Best evidence synthesis iteration [BES] (2008).
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Other websites
The following websites have been recommended as helpful by teachers. They have not been extensively reviewed or checked for quality.
Last updated February 17, 2025
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