Interpret representations resources

Task: Answer questions about how a thermometer works. Assessment focus: expansion of water on heating.

Students use two diagrams of the night sky to answer a multiple-choice question on each.

For this task students are provided with a table of weather observations for a day in September. Students are required to write a weather report using headings that have been provided.

Students are provided with data showing the temperature and the cloud cover over a one week period. Students use this information to identify the two nights that would be the best to protect plants outside from possible frost damage and also to identify why protection is needed on such nights.

Students explain the mistake in each of six sentences about elements, compounds or mixtures.

Using provided information students answer three multiple-choice questions about numbers of atoms, elements, molecules and compounds.

Task: Match vocabulary and definitions, and select why these terms are useful to know when thinking about butterflies at risk. Assessment focus: understanding science texts.

Answer questions about a table comparing the energy usage and lifespan of different sorts of lights, and use this information to complete a second table to describe advantages and disadvantages of each. Assessment focus: reading a technical table.

Students use a circuit diagram to answer questions about how removing bulbs affects the other bulbs in the circuit. Assessment focus: Electrical circuits

Task: Use a key to identify six different metals from the descriptions provided. Assessment focus: using a key to identify metals.

Three multiple choice questions ask students to identify the most likely times for sun rise, sun set, and which diagram best illustrates night and day.

Students are provided with a diagram of a roadside cutting. They are asked to mark the fault line and the youngest rock layer in this cutting. Students then suggest two explanations for the pattern shown in the diagram.

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 investigate and report on what they noticed about a model river and how different sized materials are moved by the water.

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

Students use a table about properties of different materials to answer questions about this, and to group the materials listed into two groups.

Task: Sequence drawings of a bean seedling to show order of events during germination. Assessment focus: germination.

Students use diagrams of rock layers to answer questions concerning geological history, oldest layer, and to account for the presence of fossils.

Students label six diagrams as an element, compound, or mixture.

Task: Match descriptions of kingfishers to their likely diet, and answer questions about food chains. Assessment focus: interpretation of text and pie graphs; conventions of food chains.

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

Task: Students apply both their knowledge of the functions of roots and information from a model to explain why care is needed when transplanting trees. Assessment focus: interpreting diagrams.

Task: Decide what information can or cannot be inferred from food chain diagrams. Assessment focus: reading food chains

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: Explain the science messages communicated in a cartoon. Assessment focus: decomposition and photosynthesis.