The strands Ngā whenu

A clear and structured progression of achievement objectives that spans all levels of schooling is set out in the four strands.

Two children playing cricket.

About the strands

Learning should be included across all four of the conceptual strands as ākonga progress through the curriculum levels. It is not compulsory or necessary for a single unit of work to cover all strands.

For example

In level one there are 11 achievement objectives across the four strands. Over Years 1 and 2, ākonga should have the opportunity for learning across all of them. Some achievement objectives will be revisited more than once over that time.

There are no separate strands for ‘health’ versus ‘physical education’. The strands are interrelated and connected, with aspects of both covered in each strand.

Some strands naturally align more closely to learning in specific key areas of learning.

Each strand is further divided into a number of achievement aims, beneath which you will find the achievement objectives. For each curriculum level, an achievement aim has a single achievement objective.

This excerpt from The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) shows the strands, achievement aims, and achievement objectives for level one:

Currclm Strd AOs 2400