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Assessment focus: student ability to use contextual clues in order to infer the meaning of a word. (There is a link to the text used for this resource in the Using this Resource section.)

This task assesses student ability to find the text features of an explanation of a scientific idea.

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: Use evidence to make inferences about how leaves help plants survive in particular environments. Assessment focus: leaf adaptations.

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: 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.

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 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.

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.

Students combine their observations with some information provided to complete a story about what might have happened in the photograph.

In this activity students progressively build up evidence for and against a new idea in pest control: using bumblebees to transmit a fungicide. Students practise argumentation skills and reflect on how they formulate opinions on environmental issues.

Students describe a functional rule for two spatial patterns.

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.

Students identify a correct statement about the comparing the overall distribution of two dot plots.

Students compare drawings of a healthy and unhealthy plant and decide which quantitative and/or qualitative data distinguishes them. This is a mathematics/science resource.

Task: Select which state of water applies to a list of places where water can be found. Assessment focus: states of water.

Task: Process and interpret data in a table to identify the best paper to use for a game. Evaluate the reliability of the collected data. Assessment focus: using evidence to answer a question.

Task: Match everyday terms about properties with their meanings. Use their understanding about properties of paper and their uses to justify appropriate questions to investigate. Assessment focus: asking questions about paper properties.

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: Describe how features of the New Zealand long-tailed bat help it to survive. Assessment focus: identifying features for survival.

Assessment focus: ability to critically analyse and interpret a visual text, based on individual perception and the use of descriptors (visual/verbal/sound etc) to illustrate interpretation.

Students first do the science activity Throwing balloons 3 or Throwing balloons 4 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 resource's writing task where they describe the balloon and what happens when it is 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.

Task: Match insects to their adaptations for protection against enemies, and infer two ways stick insects are adapted for their protection against predators. Assessment focus: using observations to make suggestions about survival methods.

Task: Answer questions about what happens to water in open and closed containers. Assessment focus: evaporation.

Students explain how they can work out how many striped or shaded beads are needed for a number of repeated 'sets', and identify the number of striped and shaded beads for given numbers of sets.