Students look closely at a photograph taken on the beach and record their observations. They think and write about the consequences of the things they see.
Task: Make observations from a photograph, identify potential environmental problems giving reasons, decide which problem is the most important, and give reasons for the choice. Assessment focus: (1) observation, and (2) identifying and prioritising cause and effect relationships.
Task: Make observations from a photograph, identify potential problems giving reasons, decide which problem is the most important and give reasons for the choice. Assessment focus: observing, identifying risk.
Make observations from a photograph, identify potential environmental problems giving reasons, decide which problem is the most important and give reasons for the choice.
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.
Students are asked to explain how a stone from the top of a mountain could become sand on a beach. Students then identify the most likely way stones 'move' from the tops of mountains to the coast.
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 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 suggest ways to stop sand dunes blowing on to farmland, and describe the predicted outcome of their suggestions. Assessment focus: application of knowledge of erosion to a specific situation.
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.
Students to apply their understanding of basic wave behaviour at the sea shore to make an inference about waves in a different but analogous context: to predict where the worst damage might occur in an earthquake.
Students read an article about an investigation into the sustainable harvest of pīkao and identify key features of the investigation. Assessment focus: interpreting information about how scientists work.
Task: Students differentiate between simple observations and inferences, and between observations that require measurement and those that do not.
Assessment focus: observing scientifically.
Task: Use understandings about heat energy and insulation to describe how adaptations help Emperor penguins survive in Antarctica. Assessment focus: adaptations for keeping warm in cold conditions.
Task: Students play a tag game that simulates the relationships between elements within a waterway, and discuss how different scenarios impact on the populations living there. Assessment focus: changes within a habitat affect everything living there.