Links with teachers

NIWA collaborates directly with teachers through its involvement with the Royal Society of New Zealand Teaching Fellows. As part of the programme, Teacher Fellows participate in the life of the institute (including field work), engage in discussion and generally enhance their science skills and background. They work on defined projects and create teaching resources and activities to take back to the classroom.

Links to the New Zealand curriculum

Each issue of our flagship publication Water & Atmosphere contains pointers for using individual articles to support classroom teaching. The latest issues include references to NCEA Achievement Standards; earlier issues refer to the New Zealand Curriculum.

Curriculum connections

Calculating the weather

Use our climate data to devise mathematics-orientated exercises for secondary school students. We also provide an overview of New Zealand climate data for use in school projects.

Climate and Weather

Resources

Freshwater

• Environment Watch: an educational resource for secondary school students produced by NIWA. Based on environmental items from the TV3 shoe No8 Wired, the CD series identifies relevant objectives in the New Zealand secondary school curriculum. Worksheets are available to compliment the CDs.
• New Zealand Streams & Rivers: by NIWA author Scott Larned and published by the Royal Society of New Zealand, the paper contains information about water quality, land-use changes and managing and restoring streams and rivers.

Estuaries

• When Fresh Water Meets Salty Water: a classroom exercise that explores the physics of estuaries.
• Sedimentation: its impact on estuaries: written by NIWA authors and published by the Royal Society of New Zealand (and also included in pages 19–26 of NZ Science Teacher No. 101), this resource describes NIWA’s fieldwork north of Auckland and in the Coromandel and looks at how  increased amounts of sediment impact estuaries.
  

• New Zealand’s Sandy Coasts: a NIWA CD resource for science and geography teachers which covers coastal processes and hazards such as the effects of erosion on development. The introductory material includes information on how the content fits into the New Zealand science, physics and geography curricula.

Oceans

• The Iron Hypothesis: by NIWA author Julie Hall and published by the Royal Society of New Zealand, the paper looks at the SOIREE iron fertilisation experiment in the Southern Ocean.
• Marine Biodiversity: by Dennis Gordon and published by the Royal Society of New Zealand, this resource provides an introduction to the ecosystems of our ocean habitats. 
• Spongy Skeletons: by Jill MacGregor and published by Learning Media Ltd, this resource about sea sponges is written for primary school-aged students. more sponge resources
  

For specific project ideas, see Stuff for Students