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This practical task requires students to carry out three tests to find out if each element is a metal or non-metal.

Students decide if a graph is suitable to display category data and explain the reasons.

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.

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

Students categorise statements according to whether they are evidence or inferences. They make inferences about moa, supporting them with evidence. Assessment focus: thinking in scientific ways.

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: Describe where water goes when washing is drying and from a swimming pool, and discuss factors that affect this process. Assessment focus: evaporation.

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: 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.

Choose which toy vehicle will roll further, and explain why. The two vehicles are set up under different conditions (ramps at different slopes, rolling onto different surfaces at the bottom). Assessment focus: science explanations using ideas about forces and energy.

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

This comprehension task assesses student ability to find details that relate to the main idea of a text about a Māori naturalist/scientist. Students are asked to read a text, find details about the given main idea, then justify why they think the main idea is right or wrong.

Task: Identify adaptations of 3 animals that live under the soil, and design an animal that could live underground. Self-assess the design by considering given criteria. Assessment focus: adaptations that enable an animal to live underground.

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.

Explain what affects the distance travelled by toy cars, and why they eventually stop. Assessment focus: science explanations using ideas about forces and energy.