Ecology resources

Task: Students draw a fruit tree for each season of the year. Assessment focus: Seasonal changes of fruit trees.

Students explain the terms endangered and extinct. Students give two examples of animals that are endangered and give reasons for why these animal numbers have declined.

Students explain three ways native birds could be affected if a stand of native bush found on farmland was removed.

Students explain what the effects of draining a pond would have on the ducks and reeds that live there.

Students are given some information about what to do when whales are stranded on our beaches. They answer three questions using this information to help them.

Students match the names of five animal pests to notes on each of these pests.

Students read about the adaptations of a fictitious dinosaur, and then draw and colour in a picture of a dinosaur that illustrates these adaptations.

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

Task: Read a short piece of narrative. Identify and explain the behavioural adaptations of oystercatchers. Assessment focus: interpreting text to identify behavioural adaptations and their purposes.

This task assesses student ability to find the text features of a science report about one of our native birds. The task is essentially a literacy task in the context of scientific writing, and can also be accessed from the English Bank.

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.

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.

Task: Play a card game to join two sentence fragments to complete a sentence. Assessment focus: a) relationships of elements in a waterway, and b) science vocabulary.

Task: Students play a card game to construct a waterways relationships web. Assessment focus: relationships within a waterways ecosystem.

Task: Students answer questions about a Southern Ocean food web. Assessment focus: interpreting food webs.

Task: students interpret diagrams to consider the effects of tidal changes on rock pools. Assessment focus: relationship of living things with their physical environment.

Students colour in three fish according to given instructions. They then explain the advantage of this colour pattern for each fish.

Task: read an article about releasing hand-reared kaka into a safe environment and answer questions about the research. Assessment focus: field investigations.

Students are provided with a fact file on the tuatara. Students answer four questions that are based on information contained in the fact file.

Students give two pieces of information a scientist could learn from placing bands on the legs of birds.

For this NEMP task students show their understanding of the life cycle, functions and parts of a tree.

Students give two reasons why it is an advantage for a porcupine fish to inflate its body and have its spines stick out when it is in danger.

Task: View photograph to explain how a chiton protects itself in its environment. Assessment focus: identifying features that help to protect an animal in its particular environment.

Task: Students use an image of an Australian lizard to explain what purpose is served by the lizard's tail looking like its head. Assessment focus: features for survival.