New Zealand Primary

Oddizzi easily fits with many topics within Social Science, but also, through its use of ICT, it links with technology and English.

Key Competencies

Oddizzi’s content and tools supports the development of 3 of the key competencies – “Relating to Others”, “Participating and Contributing” and “Using Languages, Symbols and Text”; as they all focus on being actively involved in communities, making connections with others and ensuring learners recognise different viewpoints.

In addition, use of Oddizzi can begin the process of building students’ international capability which is of significant importance within the Secondary Curriculum.

Whakatauki

Oddizzi can be used as a tool in the classroom to reflect the Whakatauki for Social Science. We encourage children to be actively involved in their learning and build connections with other learners across the globe to develop a better understanding of cultures, communities and their differences/similarities. This underpins the social science curriculum of being confident, connected, actively involved life long learners.

Geography and cultural learning

By taking an inquiry based approach in topics covered by the four different learning areas Oddizzi provides many opportunities to explore people and communities, interact with other cultures (especially using ClassPals), explore past events, experiences and actions and address consumption production and distribution. This social enquiry process also threads with “Habit of Mind”.

Research

Oddizzi is a great tool for researching information (depending on the topic). This helps to set children up with a foundation for their learning in this area and provides background information. Using ClassPals then enables children to link with countries they are exploring and gain more information on a specific topic.

English and ICT

ClassPals also links into English and ICT and could be used as an ongoing penpal style communication giving children the opportunity to write to their peers around the world and respond to their messages. Class expectations for this would be set up prior to this being implemented.