Year 8 - Lesson 5

Curriculum level:
4
Programme focus:
Why a Treaty?
Length of lesson:
45 – 90 minutes

Focus learning areas

  • Traders

Achievement Objectives

Students will gain knowledge, skills, and experience to:

  • Understand how exploration and innovation create opportunities and challenges for people, places, and environments.
  • Understand that events have causes and effects.

Learning outcomes

This programme will provide students with opportunities to:

  • Discuss what trading involves.
  • Decide on items that Māori and Europeans traded, and to make decisions with peers based on prior knowledge and experiences.

Suggested activities

Talk to the class about trading, and discuss some other words for trade – swap, exchange etc.

This is something we all do many times during our lives. Introduce the idea that Māori had some items that European people (traders) wanted.

Ask the students if they would give away any of their valued possessions. No. Most people would not and Māori saw a trade as an opportunity to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with non-Māori.

Sorting activity

Provide each pair or group with a selection of pictures for the following items:

  • Trees
  • Whales
  • Flax
  • Fresh water
  • Kumera
  • Watercress
  • Land use
  • Axe
  • Saw
  • Nails
  • Blankets
  • Wool jersey
  • Wool trousers
  • Hat
  • Musket
  • Sheep
  • Pig
  • Cow
  • Potato
  • Orange
  • Apple

Ask the groups to sort the pictures into two piles – one pile with items that Māori owned, and one pile with the items the Europeans would trade with them.

This could be done as a competition or, alternatively, could be played like memory.

CD Rom/ Website

  • Why a Treaty?
  • Whalers

Update New Zealand mural

Explain to the students that many Māori were trading items from their environment.

  • How will this affect the mural you have drawn? (Make amends as needed – rub out more trees, draw in more houses and whaling stations.)
  • Discuss how much the mural has changed since it was first drawn (before any humans set foot on New Zealand).

Supporting information

Trade
http://www.treaty2u.govt.nz/Māori-and-the-british/trade/