
Session 1 · TRACE: Causes & Consequences
From lunch counters to new laws
- 10 minRecap: Greensboro, 1 February 1960. Within weeks, students were holding sit-ins in dozens of cities. Why did it spread so fast?
- 20 minCause chain: in groups, link Birmingham 1963 (more than a thousand young people marching, and police using fire hoses and dogs against them on television) to the Civil Rights Act of 2 July 1964. Then link Selma 1965 to the Voting Rights Act of 6 August 1965.
- 15 minConsequences: sort cards into short-term and long-term, intended and unintended (for example, cafés open to all, Black voter registration rising in the South, white resistance, new laws still being argued about today).
- 5 minExit card: was the law the cause of change, or the result of it?
Session 2 · TRACE: Causes & Consequences
Apology and revival in Aotearoa
- 10 minWhat made the Dawn Raids happen? Look at the 1970s oil shocks, job losses and blame. How can hard times lead people to target a group?
- 20 minTwo consequence timelines: 1972 petition → Māori Language Day → Māori Language Week (1975) → te reo an official language (1987). Dawn Raids 1974–76 → decades of hurt → a petition led by young Pacific people → the apology on 1 August 2021.
- 15 minRead short extracts from the 2021 apology speech. What does an apology change? What can it not change? Discuss in a talking circle.
- 5 minStart your strategy scorecard: list every strategy you have met so far.
Getting started
Use a cause-and-consequence chain template: problem → action → reaction → result → years later.
Stretch
Investigate what happened to the Voting Rights Act in 2013 (Shelby County v Holder). Do rights, once won, stay won?
Checkpoint
Each student can explain two causes of the Civil Rights Act or the 2021 apology and one long-term consequence.
Activities for this week
- Cause and consequence chains: How did actions in the street lead to new laws?
Useful this week
- Civil Rights Act (1964) ↗ What the law banned and how the movement pushed Congress to pass it.
- Voting Rights Act (1965) ↗ How the Selma marches led to a law protecting the right to vote.
- Timeline of the Dawn Raids ↗ Events from 1968 to 1977, showing the causes of the raids and the response.