Students answer one question about diet given the type of beak that birds have. Students are also asked about how scientists might investigate information about moa.
Task: Design a plant that meets the criteria for a particular environment. Assessment focus: identifying specific features of a plant and explaining how they help it survive in its 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.
Students are given a graph that shows how many days it took for bread placed in different areas to grow mould. Students use this graph to answer three short questions.
Students are provided with a table that gives them some properties of five different materials. They answer four short answer questions that involve interpreting information from the table.
Students are given results from an investigation looking at light intensity and its effect on the rate of photosynthesis in two plants. Students are required to draw line graphs of this data and then answer a number of questions pertaining to this.
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.
Use knowledge of insulation to answer questions about baked Alaska dessert, and how it compares to a chilly bin. Assessment focus: Interpreting diagrams, interpreting analogies, and using knowledge of insulation.
Task: Describe what happens to ice in a glass of water, giving reasons, and explain where water forming on the outside of the glass comes from. Assessment focus: changes of state.
For this practical students are required to investigate how the use of pulleys affects the effort force needed to raise a load. Students gather results, write a conclusion, and describe two situations in which a pulley system would be useful.
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.
Students first do the science activity Throwing Balloons 2 (PW2548) where they predict, observe, and explain what will happen when a balloon containing another balloon filled with water is thrown. Then the students do this writing task where they describe the balloon and what happened when it was thrown, and explain why they think it moved the way it did. Six annotated exemplars of student scripts (writing) are included under the "Working with Students" tab.