Marine Reserves: Protecting Our Big Blue Backyard by Laura Goodall is an informative non-fiction text that explains what marine reserves are and why they are essential for protecting Aotearoa New Zealand’s unique ocean environments. Using clear explanations, diagrams, and real examples, the text describes how marine reserves and mahinga mātaitai protect biodiversity by limiting human impact and allowing marine species to recover and thrive. It explores different marine habitats around the country, introduces key species found in reserves, and explains how reserves support scientific research by providing places where ecosystems can be studied without disturbance. By combining accessible science with ideas of care and responsibility, the text supports students to understand how protection, knowledge, and behaviour work together to safeguard the sea.

The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy, science, and social sciences, supporting inquiry into ecosystems, biodiversity, kaitiakitanga, and human responsibility for protecting marine environments in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This pack contains a range of response activities complete with activity explainer videos for exploring thinking skills and developing emotional understandings and compassionate inquiry including:

• Blooms Higher Order Thinking activities
• Book Club guide for deepening text discussion
• A range of activities to explore emotional understanding, compassionate inquiry, empathy development, vocabulary and developing skills for self and co-regulation.

Curriculum Phase: Phase 3

Year Level: Year 4

English (NZC Levels 3–4):
reading for meaning and critical thinking, identifying key ideas and supporting details, interpreting diagrams and visual information, building topic-specific vocabulary, synthesising information across sections

Science – Living World:
marine habitats and ecosystems, biodiversity, human impact on the environment, scientific observation and evidence

Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories:
kaitiakitanga, mahinga mātaitai, Māori perspectives, relationships between people and place, continuity and change, community responsibility

Text type:
Non-fiction, informational text, explanatory report

Key words include:
marine reserves, mahinga mātaitai, biodiversity, ecosystems, habitats, ocean, sea, coastline, fish, shellfish, seaweed, sponges, overfishing, pollution, climate change, protection, conservation, scientists, research, kaitiakitanga, tangata whenua, iwi, hapū, kaimoana, sustainability, guardianship, Aotearoa New Zealand