Women, Whānau, and Conflict

Overview

This is lesson 18 of 30 in Whenua, War, and Sovereignty. Students broaden conventional military narratives by investigating the roles and experiences of Māori women, children, whānau, and other non-combatants during conflict. They build on previous learning about causes, events, and consequences by analysing oral histories, biographies, and community sources as evidence of lived experience.

Learning intentions

Students will:

• identify how women, children, whānau, and non-combatants experienced and influenced conflict
• analyse oral histories, biographies, and community sources for perspective, usefulness, and reliability
• make connections between individual experiences, wider historical forces, and whānau/community impacts
• prepare evidence-based ideas for an historical inquiry into the significance of conflict to New Zealanders

Success criteria

• I can explain how a source reveals the experiences or roles of people outside the conventional military narrative.
• I can annotate evidence by linking it to a focusing question and commenting on perspective or reliability.
• I can compare sources and identify where they agree, differ, or leave gaps.
• I can make a supported judgement about why these experiences matter in understanding conflict.

Curriculum links

• Carry out an inquiry of an historical event or place that is of significance to New Zealanders: preparing questions, annotating evidence, organising sources, and evaluating the inquiry.
• Examine an historical event or place that is of significance to New Zealanders: explaining key historical ideas with supporting evidence and describing significance to New Zealanders.
• Level 7 History: understanding how historical forces and movements influence causes and consequences, and how interpretations of significant events differ.
• English visual and verbal text: selecting and structuring evidence for a clear purpose and audience.

Lesson structure (120 minutes)

1. 0–10 min · Provocation and safe entry. Teacher opens the provocation slide showing a conflict memorial or wartime photograph with the question, “Whose story is missing when history focuses mainly on fighters?” Establishes that sources may include grief, displacement, survival, resistance, caregiving, and cultural loss; students write an initial response, then share with a partner. Remind students not to speculate about personal experiences and to use respectful language.

2. 10–25 min · Historical framing. Teacher uses the framing slides to recap the unit’s conflict context and introduce “non-combatant” as a category that does not mean passive or unimportant. Explain that women and whānau may have sheltered people, sustained communities, negotiated, resisted, cared for others, preserved whakapapa and tikanga, or experienced forced movement and loss. Students create a four-part note grid—roles, experiences, perspectives, significance—and record examples from the teacher’s overview.

3. 25–40 min · Modelling source analysis. Teacher displays one short oral-history extract and models a think-aloud annotation using the source-analysis organiser: What does the source show? Whose perspective is present? What makes it useful? What cautions are needed? How does it answer the focusing question? Students independently annotate a second sentence or image caption, then compare their reasoning with a partner.

4. 40–75 min · Collaborative source inquiry. Teacher forms six groups of five and distributes the source-analysis organiser with a source pack containing oral-history extracts, a biography, a memorial or museum description, a community-history account, and a visual source. Each group investigates one focusing question, such as “How did whānau sustain community during conflict?” or “How did conflict affect women and children differently from combatants?” Students assign roles, read closely, annotate at least three pieces of evidence, record source details, and identify one corroboration, contradiction, or gap. Teacher conferences with groups, pressing students to distinguish description from analysis.

5. 75–95 min · Jigsaw interpretation. Teacher uses the jigsaw instructions and comparison prompts to regroup students so that each new group contains one representative from each source inquiry. Students teach their source findings, then complete a comparison table: shared experience, differing perspective, evidence that is strongest, and an unanswered question. Each student drafts a three-sentence explanation connecting one individual or whānau experience to a wider consequence of conflict.

6. 95–110 min · Significance and inquiry writing. Teacher displays the significance and writing prompt slides and revisits the ways significance can be judged: impact at the time, depth of effect, numbers affected, duration, and continuing influence. Students write a short paragraph answering: “Why is recovering these experiences important to an historical understanding of conflict in Aotearoa?” They must use two sources, explain one reliability issue, and make a clear judgement rather than simply retell events.

7. 110–120 min · Exit assessment and debrief. Teacher asks students to complete the final section of the source-analysis organiser as an exit response: one important insight, one source limitation, and one refined focusing question for the unit inquiry. Invite two or three students to share; collect the organisers to identify next-lesson needs.

Resources

• the Women, Whānau, and Conflict inquiry deck
• the source-analysis organiser
• Curated source pack: oral histories, biographies, community sources, memorial or museum descriptions, and visual evidence
• Projector or interactive display
• Highlighters or coloured pens
• Whiteboard and markers
• A4 paper for group annotations
• Timer

Assessment

• Formatively assess students’ annotations for links to the focusing question, source usefulness, perspective, reliability, and corroboration.
• During group conferences, ask students to justify why a source is useful rather than merely identify its content.
• Collect the final paragraph and exit response, checking for two pieces of evidence, a supported significance judgement, and a relevant focusing question.

Differentiation

• Provide sentence starters: “This source suggests…”, “It is useful because…”, “Caution is needed because…”, and “This matters because…”.
• Give students who need support a reduced source set, audio versions of oral-history extracts, and a pre-highlighted key passage; allow oral explanation before writing.
• Extend confident students by requiring them to reconcile conflicting perspectives and evaluate how the source’s creator, purpose, audience, and context shape its reliability.
• Avoid presenting Māori women, children, or whānau only as victims. Invite students to identify agency, leadership, resistance, care, continuity, and cultural knowledge while respecting that iwi and hapū experiences and interpretations may differ.