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 provided with a picture of a New Zealand native bird. Students select a word from a given list to name each of these bird parts. Students are then required to explain why the bird needs each of these named parts.

Students match each plant diagram to a description that matches the adaptation for each particular plant. They then explain two of their answers.

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.

Students identify the producers, herbivores, and carnivores in four illustrated food chains. Students then explain each of these terms and explain what the arrows in food chains mean.

Task: Read a story about a cat and use the information to draw a food chain. Assessment focus: Using information to construct a food chain.

Task: Students answer questions about feeding relationships in a rocky shore ecosystem. Assessment focus: interpreting a food web.

Students use a diagram that shows a food web to answer five questions about the information within the food web.

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

Using information about 'feeding links' between several different animals and plants students draw a food web to show all these links.

Task: Use a Venn diagram to interpret a food web based on the vegetable garden. Assessment focus: using diagrams to identify relationships between organisms; using systems thinking to describe these relationships.