Gather and interpret data resources

Using the principles of fair testing, students identify four factors that could affect the time it takes for electric jugs to boil water.

This whole investigation requires students to find out how spring stretch is affected by different masses pulling on it. There is also a section for planning a similar investigation and a processing section using some provided data.

Task: Answer questions about levers. Assessment focus: levers.

Students read a passage about a proposed fair test and then list four variables that need to be controlled.

Students investigate energy transfer by colliding marbles, explaining their observations, and what happens to the energy of the moving marble on impact.

Students are asked to explain why the Southern Cross appears not to be in the same place in the night sky that it was a few months previously.

For this practical students make observations about dissolving, and plan and carry out an investigation to find out what makes sugar dissolve more quickly.

Describe methods for speeding up and slowing down melting of an ice cube using one of three provided objects, and explain why the methods would work. Assessment focus: planning an investigation.

Students read some information about testing the absorbency of different papers. They outline two features that need to be kept the same if the tests were to be fair.

Students answer five questions about 'fair testing' for an outlined investigation.

Task: Plan a fair test to see if adding salt water to water affects how long it takes to freeze. Assessment focus: managing variables.

Students are asked to identify a solid, liquid, and a gas. They are also asked to write down two things that are generally true for each of these three states of matter.

Students outline a test they could do to show if a substance is a metal or not.

Students are given an experimental setup of heating water with a burning peanut and are asked how they could change this in three ways to get a greater temperature increase. Students are also asked to give two important experimental conditions that should remain the same if the experiment was repeated.

Students identify the variables to be kept constant, and the variable to be different, when they plan a fair test to show if green plants need light to grow.

Task: Order fruit according to size and number of seeds, make a generalisation about the pattern and use this to predict whether a fig has small or large seeds. Assessment focus: pattern seeking.

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.

For this NEMP task students write about the parts of a praying mantis that help it survives.

Select the correct pair to set up a fair test. Assessment focus: controlling variables.

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

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

Task: Make careful observations of objects in a picture to assess the size of one of the objects.

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 explain how two armoured reptiles' adaptations protect them from being eaten by predators.

Task: Use information about differences between moths and butterflies to decide which category examples belong to, and identify what evidence was used. Assessment focus: observation, using evidence.