Senior Secondary Launch Pad (Y11-13)

📋 Kaiako Planning Snapshot

Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions

By the end of this unit, senior students will:

Define success through controllable actions, contribution, support and observable evidence
Build a realistic weekly plan with protected recovery, checkpoints and a response to disruption
Evaluate the credibility, relevance, context and limits of information before using it
Connect a precise claim to evidence, reasoning, purpose and a proportionate limit
Compare future pathways with current evidence and choose a reversible next step

Paearu Angitu — Success Criteria

I can:

Define what success will leave as evidence and place one action in an honest weekly plan
Reach a bounded source-use verdict and write a paragraph that makes its reasoning visible
Compare three pathways without ranking them by prestige and identify what I need to verify next

🎯 Curriculum Links | Te Hononga ki te Marautanga

Health and Physical Education — Health Education · Phase 4

"Reframing, setting boundaries, and building supportive relationships can strengthen emotional wellbeing, and learning to use these tools takes time."

This is a Phase 4 statement carried deliberately into Years 11–13 rather than a band error. The hauora work it names — boundaries, supportive relationships, and the fact that using these tools takes time — is exactly what Lesson 1's "support before crisis" and Lesson 2's protected recovery ask senior students to practise, and senior years are when the pressure that makes it necessary actually arrives.

Beyond that anchor, each lesson quotes its own verbatim Te Mātaiaho statement in its Curriculum section: Lesson 1 quotes the anchor statement above (id 48806), Lessons 2 and 5 quote further Health and Physical Education Phase 4 statements (ids 16969 and 52550), and Lessons 3 and 4 quote English Phase 4 statements (ids 90306 and 15963) for the source-evaluation and formal-writing work — the two English claims are quoted verbatim with ids, not merely stated as support. The Social Sciences connection (community participation, identity and civic responsibility — Lesson 5) remains unit-level support only: no single statement is quoted for it.

Research base | Te Whare Ako

Dylan Wiliam — every lesson opens with WALT and WILF and closes with an exit ticket, and the unit's organising question is what evidence a claim of success would actually leave behind. That is formative assessment used as the spine rather than as a starter activity.
Mason Durie — Te Whare Tapa Whā underpins the hauora anchor above. Lesson 2 begins from the week students already have (paid work, care, transport, worship, health) instead of an empty timetable, and protects recovery rather than treating overload as a character flaw.
Paulo Freire — Lesson 1 has students define success before the year hands them one made of rank, credits and approval; Lesson 3 asks who is responsible for a claim; Lesson 5 refuses to rank pathways by prestige. Conscientisation applied to a senior student's own trajectory.
Te Whare Ako — the full pedagogy collection.

This unit supports Te Mātaiaho outcomes across Health and Physical Education (hauora, self-management), English (formal writing, text purpose and audience), and Social Sciences (community participation, identity, and civic responsibility).

Activity	Focus	Outcome
Success definition + weekly plan	Controllable action, support, calendar and recovery	A dated receipt and a plan that survives disruption
Source verdict + defensible paragraph	Credibility, relevance, evidence, reasoning and limits	A bounded source-use decision and explained claim
Pathway comparison	Current evidence, values and reversible next steps	Three live options and one dated information-producing action

Entry / On-level / Extension

Entry: Use the worked four-column success example and a partly completed weekly grid. Compare one teacher-selected pathway before students work privately.
On-level: Complete all five lessons in sequence and retain the success receipt, weekly plan, source verdict, paragraph and pathway comparison.
Extension: Add counter-evidence to the source task, test a second interpretation in Lesson 4 and model a staged route that combines more than one pathway.

Inclusion Guidance

ESOL / ELL learners: Pre-teach the decision vocabulary, allow first thinking in a home language and provide sentence frames for the source verdict and pathway question.
Neurodiverse learners / ADHD: Use movable cards for claim, evidence and reasoning; plan three days rather than a whole week; accept audio or diagrammatic explanations where writing is not the learning focus.
Students under pressure: Avoid collecting personal calendars, support maps or pathway choices. Students may use fictionalised goals and unnamed roles while still demonstrating the reasoning process.

Mastering the Final Ascent

Senior students are asked to make consequential decisions while information and circumstances keep changing. This pack teaches one portable response: define the evidence, make a feasible plan, test the source, explain the reasoning and preserve a reversible next step.

Senior Focus

🛡️ Hauora & Resilience
📊 Strategic Goal Mapping
🔍 Evidence & Defensible Claims
🧭 Pathway Planning

Senior Launch Activities

1. Define success, then put it in a real week

Lessons 1 and 2 replace broad aspiration with a controllable action, a visible receipt, a support route and a recovery plan.

Start: Define Success Before It Defines You
Focus: What would an ordinary week show if the plan were working?

2. Test evidence, explain a claim, compare futures

Lessons 3–5 make one reasoning routine portable: verify the source, state what it supports, explain the link and choose a next step that produces better information.

Start: Evidence Under Pressure
Finish: Keep More Than One Door Open

Kaiako Notes — Teaching This Unit

Teach these lessons as a decision sequence, not a motivation programme. Lesson 1 defines success through controllable evidence; Lesson 2 places one action in an honest week; Lessons 3 and 4 test and use evidence; Lesson 5 applies the same reasoning to pathways. Each lesson leaves an artefact the next one uses.

Senior autonomy does not mean solitary work. Students rehearse asking early, naming limits and making a revisable decision. Keep personal goals, calendars, support maps and pathway options private unless a student chooses to share them; assess the quality of the process, not the life circumstances visible inside it.

Do not use rangatiratanga as a decorative synonym for generic self-management. The unit's practical commitment is that students retain authority over disclosure, criteria and next steps while recognising the relationships and responsibilities within which decisions are made.

Assessment Overview

☐ Success definition — result, controllable actions, contribution and support
☐ Feasible weekly plan — scheduled action, evidence, checkpoint and recovery move
☐ Source verdict and defensible paragraph — claim, evidence, reasoning and limit
☐ Pathway comparison — three options, current sources and one reversible next step

📦 Senior Resources

📚

Weekly Planning Grid

Build the grid from real commitments, then test how it survives a disrupted week.

🔍

Source Verdict Routine

Trace origin, context and corroboration before deciding how a source can be used.

🧭

Pathway Comparison

Compare three live options without turning one route into the prestige default.

🔗 Unit Progression & Next Steps

The five lessons form one decision spine. Each output becomes evidence for the next lesson rather than disappearing into a one-off first-week activity.

Define Success Before It Defines You — separate results from controllable action, contribution and support.
Build a Week That Can Survive — schedule one action, protect recovery and plan for disruption.
Evidence Under Pressure — trace a source and reach a bounded use verdict.
From Evidence to a Defensible Claim — connect claim, evidence, reasoning, purpose and limits.
Keep More Than One Door Open — compare pathways and choose a reversible next step.

Bridge forward: revisit the Lesson 1 receipt and Lesson 2 checkpoint after two weeks. Use the Lesson 3 verdict and Lesson 4 paragraph pattern in the first source-based task in every subject.

📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot

What to prepare

The school's current learning, pastoral and careers contacts; check these on the teaching day.
A private weekly grid and three source cards built around one current, checkable claim.
A date for returning to the students' first-week receipts and recovery plans.

Inclusion and safety

Students may work with fictionalised goals, broad categories and unnamed roles. Do not collect calendars or support maps by default.
Offer movable strips, models and sentence frames before reducing the intellectual demand.
For extension, add uncertainty, counter-evidence or competing values—not extra decorative writing.

Design Rationale | Te Take o te Raupapa

This sequence treats independence as accountable decision-making. Students define the evidence, test whether a plan survives reality, inspect the authority and limits of information, explain their reasoning and preserve more than one future option.

Evidence before confidence

Students are not rewarded for sounding certain. Every plan and claim names what would count as evidence and what remains unknown.

Relational, not compulsory

Support, whānau and community can shape decisions without requiring disclosure or forcing students to speak for an identity group.

Revision is the work

A changed plan or qualified conclusion is treated as stronger when new evidence justifies it. The unit builds that move five times.