Education Resources

Introduction

This resource is designed to allow teachers to explore the diverse educational opportunities afforded by heritage cemeteries found in almost all of our larger cities, smaller towns and rural communities across New Zealand. The possibilities of using the cemetery as a context for study are available to the majority of New Zealand students.

These resources provide teachers with ideas and suggestions to extend the education potential of the cemetery across curriculum learning areas and teaching levels of the New Zealand curriculum. Cemeteries offer a wealth of inspiration for teachers and students in learning areas as diverse as English, mathematics, science, social sciences including anthropology, history and geography, and health.

The cemetery offers many opportunities for student inquiry beyond the classroom. Many of the resources are designed to encourage teachers to allow students to take a greater participatory role in their learning. The resources support a number of different approaches. These include undertaking some cemetery activities as a whole class game, using jigsaw teaching approaches, or using science inquiry and case study approaches, to learning about research as a process of knowledge building. An overview of the resource is available as a paper presented at the SocCon Conference in 2009 and as a PowerPoint presentation (coming soon).

Paper: Connecting cemeteries and monuments to the classroom: A powerful teaching and learning context for social sciences. (PDF file. Download size is 1.1Mb)

The resources comprise teaching units, student worksheets and slide collections. All files are available in PDF file format. many Powerpoint files are also available for teachers to use and make additions to as required.

Introductory Resources -The Cemetery

Photo-story: Introducting the cemetery (PDF file. Download size is 4.2Mb).
This photo-story is presented as 26 slides which can be used by teachers to introduce students to the variety of cemeteries they will come across in New Zealand; to cemetery and gravesite layout; and reading headstone inscriptions. Students are also introduced to what can be learned from inscriptions.

The resource is also available as a Powerpoint presentation, Introducing the Cemetery.pptx (Compatible for Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 - PDF file. Download size is 5.7Mb).

Introductory Resources - Memorials in the community

Photo-Story: Introducing Memorials (PDF file. Download size is 1.8Mb).
This thirteen-slide presentation can be used by teachers to introduce students to cemetery layout, reading headstone inscriptions and what we can learn from them.

This resource is also available as a Powerpoint presentation - Introducing Memorials.pptx (Compatible for Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 - PDF file. Download size is 3.3Mb).