Information for Teachers

SPCA’s Kids’ Portal is a fun, engaging and interactive learning tool for students, developed to support, extend and consolidate students’ learning about animal welfare, responsible animal guardianship and the role SPCA plays in the community. Designed to be used alongside SPCA’s Teachers’ Portal, the Kids’ Portal caters for different learning styles and levels, making it the ideal supporting resource for inquiry based learning. You can learn more about SPCA's Education Programme below:

Why is Animal Welfare Education Important?

Development of SPCA's Education Programme

What is SPCA's Education Programme?

SPCA’s Education Programme consists of three interlinked components that encourage teachers, children, parents and the community to think, learn and act together to achieve positive, empathetic and compassionate outcomes for human and non-human members of society.

The first component is SPCA’s Teachers’ Portal:www.spca.nz/teachers

Free online resources designed for early childhood educators and classroom teachers of Years 1-9 that provide real-life, meaningful contexts for teaching and learning.

SPCA’s Resources for Schools - for classroom teachers and consist of animal welfare unit and lesson plans, printable and digital supporting materials and assessment templates covering an array of New Zealand Curriculum achievement objectives.
SPCA's Resources for Early Learning - for early childhood teachers looking for inspiring provocations, suggested learning experiences and engaging printable resources to support and guide meaningful learning experiences, underpinned by the vision and concepts of Te Whāriki.

The second component is SPCA’s Kids’ Portal: www.spca.nz/kids

An interactive and engaging learning tool that children can use to research and find all the information they need when being taught by a classroom teacher using the SPCA Teachers’ Portal resources. Content is delivered in a range of formats, which we hope will engage all levels and types of learners.

On the portal, children can:

Learn all about SPCA and what we do.
Engage with animal care information and videos.
Enjoy puzzles, origami, colouring in and more.
Read SPCA’s Kind Matters Newsletter and enter competitions.
Find instructions to make enrichment toys for animals.
Test themselves with quizzes, share their work and submit their animal care and welfare questions using the ‘Ask an Expert’ function.
Complete the Learning at Home Booklets and be awarded digital badges.

The third component is SPCA’s Instructional Readers: www.spca.nz/readers

Available in five different languages and levelled in alignment with the Ministry of Education’s colour wheel, these books can be seamlessly integrated into school reader collections and classroom literacy programmes. The objective of each original story is to teach core animal care and wellbeing lessons through engaging, emotive and thought-provoking stories, whilst increasing children’s reading mileage and supporting the development of their reading skills and strategies.

Every primary and intermediate school in NZ has been gifted six copies of each of the 24 title thanks to grant funding.
Each instructional reader is based on a real-life SPCA animal rescue and contains messages about animal welfare, kind conservation and tips on how to be responsible animal guardians.
Free teaching notes and reader response activities are available for each title on SPCA’s Teachers’ Portal - Resources for Schools at www.spca.nz/schools
This resource aims to bring school, home and the SPCA together.
Addtional copies can be purchased for your school or home at www.spca.nz/readers

The Outcome

SPCA NZ Education Community Facebook Page