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Task: Use features of velociraptors to make inferences about their life style. Assessment focus: using evidence to make inferences.

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

Task: Identify how features/adaptations of a starfish help it survive, and decide whether the amount of evidence from scientists' observations supports or does not support their theory/inference. Assessment focus: using observations as evidence to inform theories.

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.

Students consider the potential for chemical change when a range of everyday substances are mixed. They use logical reasoning to work out the consequences of four pairs of reactions.

Task: Describe on a chart how a duck's features help it to survive, then infer what might happen if these features were changed in some way. Assessment focus: how adaptations aid survival.

Task: Create, use and identify ‘rules’ based on observable and/or measurable physical properties of common plastics. Assessment focus: classifying & identifying.

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.

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: Match the parts of a water cycle to the parts represented in a model of the water cycle and compare how they are the same and different. Assessment focus: interpreting a model.

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: Students match parts of statements about how Joan Wiffen worked like a scientist, and identify what skills or experiences helped her find fossils. Assessment focus: interpreting information about how scientists work.

Students formulate questions about glaciers and climate change to show awareness that informed opinions are based on inter-related aspects of evidence rather than individual instances.

Task: Describe and compare some physical properties of plastic objects and identify the properties scientists might use for classifying materials. Assessment focus: classifying using physical properties.

Task: Using statements from four people decide and justify whether or not each person supports wind farms. Identify which person has a misconception about wind farms, giving a reason. Assessment focus: identifying different perspectives.

Task: Look at the arrangement of fibres for four different paper towels, arrange an appropriate sequence of instructions, carry out the instructions and then communicate the data in an appropriate graph that will help answer the question. Different elements of the nature of science are embedded throughout the tasks. Assessment focus: planning and carrying out a fair test, using evidence to answer a question.