Task: Discuss opinions, presented as a concept cartoon, about why a toy car rolled down a slope eventually stops and develop group explanation. Assessment focus: explanations
Students carry out an investigation to determine the frequency and percentage of different numbers resulting from 100 dice throws. They construct a table to record the results.
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.
Task: Students differentiate between simple observations and inferences, and between observations that require measurement and those that do not.
Assessment focus: observing scientifically.
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.
Task: use information and observation skills to identify whether pictures of fish are either bony fish or sharks. Assessment focus: classification, interpreting a Venn diagram.
For this practical task students make a prediction about which lot of ice will melt first. Then students record their observations and explain why one lot of ice melted faster than the other.
Task: interpret a graph of a car's journey and add to the graph to represent a further description of the journey. Assessment focus: graph interpretation.