Participating and contributing resources

Task: Answer questions about a planned wildlife reserve. Assessment focus: interdependence of animals with their habitat.

Task: Students suggest ways to stop sand dunes blowing on to farmland, and describe the predicted outcome of their suggestions. Assessment focus: application of knowledge of erosion to a specific situation.

Task: Match animal pests to the harm they cause, and use information about pest control. Assessment focus: animal pests and their control.

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 combine their observations with some information provided to complete a story about what might have happened in the photograph.

In this activity students progressively build up evidence for and against a new idea in pest control: using bumblebees to transmit a fungicide. Students practise argumentation skills and reflect on how they formulate opinions on environmental issues.

Task: Sort cards to identify how four items of rubbish will impact on the beach, plants and animals that are found there, and humans. They then select items to remove and leave, and justify their decisions. Assessment focus: impact of materials on the environment.

Task: Look at the arrangement of fibres for four different paper towels, arrange an appropriate sequence of instructions, carry out the instructions and then communicate the data in an appropriate graph that will help answer the question. Different elements of the nature of science are embedded throughout the tasks. Assessment focus: planning and carrying out a fair test, using evidence to answer a question.

This task assesses a student's ability to persuade an audience to agree with their opinion. Some speech topics and a checklist are provided.

Students identify where heat is lost from a house, explain ways to reduce heat loss and suggest ways to reduce heat loss.

Task: Identify how the kererū's adaptations contribute to its interactions with its ecosystem, and how knowing about kererū's' adaptations can benefit both it and people. Assessment focus: using understandings about adaptations to consider actions affecting the kererū.

Task: Demonstrate understanding of the pupil reflex of the eye, and apply this to answering questions about sunglasses safety. Extension questions probe understanding of who decides on and applies safety standards. Assessment focus: effect of UV light on the eyes and how it can be mediated by simple sunglasses technology.

Task: Students identify which different events threaten our native birds or have done so in the past. Assessment focus: identification of the specific impacts of human actions.

Task: Students play a tag game that simulates the relationships between elements within a waterway, and discuss how different scenarios impact on the populations living there. Assessment focus: changes within a habitat affect everything living there.

This task assess the ability to give a short speech that teaches the audience something new. Scoring guides are provided.

This task assesses students' ability to give a book review to a small group.

Students state what things will affect how far a cube will travel when flicked in the middle with a ball-point pen, and conduct an experiment to see what happens in practice.

Students conduct a statistical investigation into the sentence length of different types of books by making and comparing dot plots.

Students conduct a statistical investigation about their prediction of the most common words used in English. They make graphs, describe their shape, and compare their own graph with ones that other students produce.

Students design a low energy house.