New beginnings and a new year!
The last week of January marks the shift from holiday-mode to planning-mode for educators in Aotearoa. We hope that you’ve had time to relax and recharge before you return to the classroom.
The Hub team has teaching experience from the early years to tertiary levels, so get in touch for help with planning or pedagogy – we are happy to assist with individual or syndicate requests.
5-Minute Volcano challenge cards
The game design uses a combination of Māori and western imagery. Use them for practising the science capability ‘Interpret representations’.
Free and fun!
5-Minute Volcano is a fast-paced, collaborative game about natural disaster preparedness. In 2025, tabletop versions of the game were donated to selected New Zealand kura/schools. The game’s been a hit, so the 5-Minute Volcano team has made the components available as PDFs – formatted for easy, double-sided printing.
Antarctica updates
Antarctica, as a context for learning, ticks so many boxes – including extreme habitats and ecosystems, adventure, history and discovery, and climate change research. We’ve been updating many of our older resources and creating new ones to keep things up to date.
An aerial view of Scott Base
Scott Base is Aotearoa new Zealand’s sole Antarctic research station. Many of its building are linked by all-weather corridors. Mt Erebus can be seen in the background.
We’ve put together a new planning resource that uses Nigel Latta’s timeless documentary On Thin Ice: Nigel Latta in Antarctica. The series features accessible, insightful stories and conversations with scientists across a range of fields – presented in Nigel’s gentle, humorous manner. The resource includes timecodes of short video excerpts paired with supporting Hub resources.
We’re catching up with the educators who’ve visited Antarctica as part of our PLD webinar offerings in term 1. Put 26 February in your calendar now – we’ll keep you posted once we have the information live.
UV and skin cancer updates
We’ve also updated many of the resources in our popular You, me and UV resource suite. UV has many beneficial effects but this at time of year, our concern is over-exposure to UV radiation and the risk of skin cancer. Check out this unit plan, which investigates UV intensity and sunscreen.
Sunburned back
A sunburn, photographed two days after a five-hour exposure to the sun. The non-burned areas were covered by togs.
Some things to think about
Have you seen our events section? It features professional development opportunities – our own as well as other providers – along with science-related experiences, conferences, etc. across the motu. These events offer interesting and engaging opportunities to grow your knowledge and understanding of a range of contexts.
For example, keep these on your planning radar, we have lots of resources to support learning around these annual events:
World Wetlands Day 2026 on 2 February
Bug of the Year 2026 voting is open until 16 February
Big Butterfly Count this citizen science project runs from 9–20 February
Seaweek – Kaupapa Moana 2026 takes place from 28 February–8 March. This article lists a selection of unit plans and other teacher support materials grouped under a range of possible teaching topics.
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Your feedback
We hope you enjoy using the Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao in your teaching and would love to hear from you. Your comments, ideas and feedback can be emailed to enquiries@sciencelearn.org.nz.
Noho ora mai
Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao
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