Earth systems resources

Task: Students answer questions about a soil food web. Assessment focus: reading a food web, systems thinking.

Task: Explain the science messages communicated in a cartoon. Assessment focus: decomposition and photosynthesis.

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

For this task students select two kinds of activity from those labelled on a diagram of an erupting volcano. Students write a description and the problems or dangers associated with each activity.

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

Students are provided with a diagram and asked to identify the type of geological process that it represents. Students are also required to explain what happened.

Students are given a diagram of a glacier, and asked to identify natural hazards and the possible effect of increased temperature on the position of the glacier snout.

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

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 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.

For this task students are provided with a diagram showing the landmasses that originally made up Gondwanaland. Students are required to identify and use their own knowledge to indicate the evidence which indicates that these landmasses were once joined together.

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

Students answer three multiple-choice questions about fossils and how they are formed.

Students read an article about an investigation into the sustainable harvest of pīkao and identify key features of the investigation. Assessment focus: interpreting information about how scientists work.

Task: Describe problems caused by cutting down trees on a bank. Assessment focus: erosion.

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 explain their understandings of the benefits of having trees in the school playground.

Students are asked to identify two impending signs of a volcanic eruption and to describe four geological events that are linked to volcanic eruptions.

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.

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.

Students are provided with two photographs of an area, one before a tree planting programme and one five years later. Students are asked to write an article on how tree-planting helps the environment.

Students are provided with a map that has numbers on it representing various ash fall depths from a volcanic eruption. Students draw lines to link the similar numbers and answer questions about these. They also explain three major problems an ash fall could cause.

Task: Use written text about farming's contribution to climate change to complete a flow chart, and answer questions about the two texts. Assessment focus: interpreting, using, and comparing different types of text.