Ecology resources

Reading text to find information about how scientists work. Assessment focus: interpreting information about how scientists work.

Task: Sort cards to identify how four items of rubbish will impact on the beach, plants and animals that are found there, and humans. They then select items to remove and leave, and justify their decisions. Assessment focus: impact of materials on the environment.

Task: Describe how features of the New Zealand long-tailed bat help it to survive. Assessment focus: identifying features for survival.

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: Match birds and nests, and explain why the choice was made. Assessment focus: using environmental cues to make inferences.

Task: Match insects to their adaptations for protection against enemies, and infer two ways stick insects are adapted for their protection against predators. Assessment focus: using observations to make suggestions about survival methods.

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

Task: Show the relationship of birds' beaks and feet to the food they eat. Assessment focus: adaptations.

Students are provided with a narrative of two children who have gone back to the past at a time when dinosaurs existed. Students have a number of questions to answer during the narrative.

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

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

Task: students explain links between a bird's feet and its lifestyle.

Task: Answer questions about frog's skin adaptations, and use this information to think about consequences of chytrid fungus for Archey's frogs. Assessment focus: using information to think about management of native endangered species.

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 given a diagram and information on the ratios of black- to grey-coated possums. Students answer questions relating to this information as well as identifying a method that could be used to determine the percentage of each coat colour.

Task: Identify how the kererū's adaptations contribute to its interactions with its ecosystem, and how knowing about kererū's' adaptations can benefit both it and people. Assessment focus: using understandings about adaptations to consider actions affecting the kererū.

Task: Decide the advantages for survival of both introduced and native frogs' life cycles, explain how climate change could impact on native frogs, and identify level of interest in survival of native frogs. Assessment focus: using information about adaptations.

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.

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

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

Task: Read information and compare the special features that influence the chances of survival of black robins and fantails. Assessment focus: interpreting text to identify risk factors for survival.

Task: Match vocabulary and definitions, and select why these terms are useful to know when thinking about butterflies at risk. Assessment focus: understanding science texts.

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

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.