Planet Earth resources

This practical task requires students to use a simple star map to point out the apparent location of stars or star groups during daylight hours. Students also use the star map to show where the Southern Cross would be situated at different times of an evening.

Students plot the positions for three different stars at three different times during the evening. Students use this information to answer questions about star movement around the South Celestial Pole.

Task: Investigate the length of shadows in relationship to the sun's position. Assessment focus: interpreting a model.

Task: Use a diagram to answer questions about seasons and day and night. Assessment focus: relationship of Sun and Earth.

Students use the Modified Mercalli intensity scale to assign magnitudes to three described earthquakes. Then they interpret data about the distance from an epicentre, and explain why, from given information, one earthquake might be more damaging than another.

Students are provided with a diagram showing layers of rock and three possible results of changes that could occur. Words and phrases are provided to help students answer several short answer questions about the possible cause of the changes.

This task requires students to develop questions about their local geology and name possible information sources.

This practical task requires students to make observations of three different types of soils and record their observations in a chart.

Students look closely at a photograph taken on the beach and record their observations. They think and write about the consequences of the things they see.

Students are provided with a situation where the bank on the school field is eroding. They are asked to write a plan for a tree-planting programme that would help to slow down the erosion.

For this practical task students investigate some features of craters, complete a table, and explain what they found out. Students then use a diagram showing some craters on the Moon to write as much information as they can about these craters.

Students view four sequential diagrams on fossilisation, and then write explanations about this process using the diagrams and their own knowledge.

For this practical task students investigate and report on what they noticed about a model river and how different sized materials are moved by the water.

This practical task assesses students' ability to design and carry out a fair test on the relationship between slope and rates of erosion.

Students view an online animation which illustrates stages of a volcanic eruption, write their observations and answer question about eruptions. Assessment focus: observations based on a model, and knowledge of volcanic eruptions.

Task: Answer questions about a diagram, and explain how we get day and night. Assessment focus: day and night.

This resource assesses students' understanding of erosion. Students order a set of diagrams showing the process of erosion in a river and write an explanation of how cliff erosion occurs by the sea.

Students are required to write down some relevant questions about the Moon's surface that they would ask an astronaut who has just returned to the Earth from the Moon.

For this practical task students create a sundial by marking observations and recording the time for each hour, and answer questions about shadows and sundials.

In this task students compare two photographs of a river with normal flow and a river in flood. They make inferences based on their observations.

Using data from three different locations, students calculate the time difference between the arrival of P and S waves and the distance of each location from an earthquake's epicentre. Students use these distances to locate the epicentre on a map of NZ.

For this task students explain the causes to the difference in height of water levels in a lake during spring, summer, and winter.

Students are asked to explain why the Southern Cross appears not to be in the same place in the night sky that it was a few months previously.