Earth systems resources

This assessment task provides students with four statements on recycling. Students circle whether each statement is true or false to determine their understanding of recycling.

Students list advantages and disadvantages of recycling. The assessment focuses on students' ability to identify impacts on the environment and its inhabitants (including people).

Task: Match recycled materials to their possible uses, and justify reasons for recycling. Assessment focus: reasons for recycling.

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.

Students read a map of a new school, and answer questions about the placement of some trees. They are assessed on their ability to suggest the trees' impact on the school environment.

Students suggest ways to prevent a steep bank slipping. The assessment focus is application of their knowledge about erosion.

This resource requires students to construct a graph on data for temperature and depth below the Earth's crust. Students then answer four questions about this.

Students are given a key list of words associated with earthquakes. Student use these and their own knowledge to write a paragraph explaining five key points about earthquakes.

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 information about the Earth's interior. Using this information and a provided scale, students construct and label a scale diagram of the Earth's interior.

Students are provided with a sequence of diagrams showing the erosion of a waterfall by a river over time. Students complete diagrams for two other waterfall erosion sequences. Each waterfall has different combinations of layers of soft and hard rocks.

Students are provided with a diagram of a roadside cutting. They are asked to mark the fault line and the youngest rock layer in this cutting. Students then suggest two explanations for the pattern shown in the diagram.

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.

Students are provided with two diagrams, one showing the focus of earthquakes in NZ and the other the Earth's plates. Students interpret these diagrams and use them to answer three short questions.

A diagram representing an area of a civil emergency is provided and students are asked to identify the geological event that has caused this. Students then give six hazards or problems that could result from this geological event.

Students are asked to explain how a stone from the top of a mountain could become sand on a beach. Students then identify the most likely way stones 'move' from the tops of mountains to the coast.

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

For this task students are provided with a diagram of a landslip and an example of a possible cause of this. Students are required to list four other possible causes of landslips.

Student view an online animation of cliff erosion and then write a description of what they observe about this process.

Students complete a diagram of a geyser by writing the correct labels from a given selection. Students are also required to answer what causes the water to heat up.

On a diagram students indicate how a cliff face might look different in 100 years from now, and explain the probable cause of this.

Students use diagrams of rock layers to answer questions concerning geological history, oldest layer, and to account for the presence of fossils.

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

For this task students are provided with three pie graphs on water. Students are required to interpret these to answer four short answer questions.

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.