Using language, symbols, and texts resources

Students give grid references, and drag and drop grid references onto a grid.

This task assesses student ability to find the text features of a science report about moa.

Task: Students classify each of six drawn whales as either toothed or baleen whales. They then divide each group further by using a key. Assessment focus: Interpreting representations.

Task: use a key to identify a fish, then complete a key to identify shellfish. Assessment focus: Interpreting representations - classification keys.

Students read a personal recount about family relationships in a Pacific context. Assessment focus: the author's construction of two characters and an evaluation of them.

This focus of this resource is punctuating direct speech. Students drag speech marks into place to show where direct speech begins and ends. The resource ends with a collaborative writing activity. Students work with a partner to create and punctuate a conversation based on the characters in a photograph.

Students identify and give rules for when numbers are divisible by three or by nine.

Students read a short extract from a legend to answer retrieval and inferential questions.

Task: Answer two questions about melting and two questions about dissolving. Assessment focus: describe and explain melting and dissolving.

This task is about topic, supporting, and summary sentences in paragraphs of persuasion.

This task is about topic, supporting, and summary sentences in paragraphs of explanation.

Students convert fractions to decimals and explain how to do it.

Students read a narrative about a family's encounter with a stray cat. They then use evidence from the text and their background knowledge to evaluate the characters. SJ-1-3-2008. Text provided.

Students produce a simple written description, using nouns and adjectives with some precision.

Students read an advertisement then identify and explain some of its language features.

Students complete a cloze passage and use their vocabulary and knowledge of grammar to create well-formed sentences.

Students make inferences from a poem. SJ-2-4-1993. Text provided.

The assessment focus is on the features of an explanation. Students explore and write an explanation of the impacts the food industry could have on improving health.

Students first do the science activity Throwing balloons 3 or Throwing balloons 4 where they predict, observe, and explain what will happen when a balloon containing another balloon filled with water is thrown. Then the students do this resource's writing task where they describe the balloon and what happens when it is thrown, and explain why they think it moved the way it did. Six annotated exemplars of student scripts (writing) are included under the "Working with Students" tab.

This comprehension task assesses a student's ability to make inferences about a character's feelings based on the evidence in a written and visual text, and their own prior experience.

This task assesses students' ability to analyse a text to identify and justify character traits and points of view, including the author's.

Task: Use close observation of photos and prior knowledge, to write explanations of how the special features of animal tongues help animals survive in their habitats. Assessment focus: structure and function.

Task: Look for the similarities and differences in how students draw graphs to display information.

Students answer questions about major natural events that happened on the Earth in one week by interpreting a diagram showing these.

Task: Complete a diagram of part of the water cycle and answer a question about rain. Assessment focus: Question a) – the water cycle and conventions of diagrams; question b) – evaporation of a solution.