Understanding about science resources

Task: Students use recent information obtained from space exploration to show how and why beliefs have changed over time. Assessment focus: interpreting information about the provisional nature of science.

Task: Students draw a labelled diagram of a plant indicating how it gets its energy. Assessment focus: photosynthesis.

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: Answer questions about the relationship between mass and stretch. Assessment focus: graph interpretation.

For this task students are provided with a diagram showing the landmasses that originally made up Gondwanaland. Students are required to identify and use their own knowledge to indicate the evidence which indicates that these landmasses were once joined together.

Students use stimulus material to answer a number of questions relating to temperature change in materials which are at different distances from a heat source.

Task: Select which stirrer would feel hottest and explain why, and in which container soup would cool fastest, and explain why. Assessment focus: heat conduction.

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 read some notes about kakapo, and answer questions on how the kakapo is distinct from other parrots, and why these birds are endangered.

Task: describe how different features of a racing car help it go fast. Assessment focus: technological responses to forces.

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.

Students use the Beaufort Scale of wind speed to categorise diary entries about the wind in Auckland.

Students are given a partially completed table which details materials which are used as either conductors or insulators of heat. Students complete the table by indicating whether the materials conduct or insulate heat or give an example of its use.

Task: read an article about releasing hand-reared kaka into a safe environment and answer questions about the research. Assessment focus: field investigations.

Students are given a diagram and information on the ratios of black- to grey-coated possums. Students answer questions relating to this information as well as identifying a method that could be used to determine the percentage of each coat colour.

Task: Decide the advantages for survival of both introduced and native frogs' life cycles, explain how climate change could impact on native frogs, and identify level of interest in survival of native frogs. Assessment focus: using information about 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 outline four tests they could do to find out if a newly described substance is a metal.

Decide whether the photographed animals are reptiles or not, and justify responses. (A fact file giving the features of reptiles is given.) Answer a question about why scientists have an agreed way of grouping living things. Assessment focus: using science-based classifications.

Task: Students answer questions about feeding relationships in a rocky shore ecosystem. Assessment focus: interpreting a food web.

Task: Read information and compare the special features that influence the chances of survival of black robins and fantails. Assessment focus: interpreting text to identify risk factors for survival.

Students are provided with a diagram of a thermometer and they answer questions on its use, how it works, and then read the temperatures from four thermometers.

Students answer three questions about data contained in pie graphs about the food wild cats eat.

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

Students are given the definitions for permanent and temporary change. The students then give two examples from the kitchen of each type of change.