Communicating in science resources

Task: Students draw to show their ideas about what happens when a puddle dries up. Assessment focus: evaporation.

Task: Match definitions to terms about light rays. Assessment focus: scientific vocabulary.

Students interpret a circuit diagram to decide whether a bulb will glow with different settings of two switches.

Task: 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 are asked to explain the meaning of the terms, recycle, reduce, and reuse.

Task: Students use observation and a key to identify native plants. Assessment focus: Using a classification key.

Students use a key to classify and describe a number of the illustrated insects and spiders.

Using a stimulus diagram showing plate tectonics, students explain why the following geological features or events; earthquakes, mid-ocean ridge, ocean trench, and volcanoes are present.

Using information about 'feeding links' between several different animals and plants students draw a food web to show all these links.

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

Task: Explain how a change in the cockle population has affected one or more organisms in a food web in the short and long term. Assessment focus: Sorting observations and inferences; reading food chains and; using a food web diagram to predict impact of change.

Students use the periodic table and their own knowledge to complete the types of atoms present, and total number of atoms present for three compounds.

Task: Use a Venn diagram to interpret a food web based on the vegetable garden. Assessment focus: using diagrams to identify relationships between organisms; using systems thinking to describe these relationships.

Task: use a key to identify which major group 4 plants belong to. Assessment focus: using a key to classify plants.

Task: Choose images to enhance a science text about an adaptation of kererū, compare the messages of images, and reflect on the role of illustrations in science texts. Assessment focus: using and interpreting images in science texts.

Using characteristics found in peas, students construct two punnet squares and then answer questions on these.

The results of three different crosses between long-haired and short-haired rabbits have been provided. Students state, with a reason which characteristic is dominant and complete a punnet square for one of the crosses.

Students interpret the diagrams of mixtures, solutions, and pure substances. Then they draw diagrams to represent other combinations of substances.

Students use diagrams of substances with labelled atoms to write their chemical formula.

Students are provided with a graph showing the average rainfall and temperatures for Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Perth. Students interpret this graph to answer a number of questions.

Students demonstrate their knowledge of solid, liquid, and gas particles by drawing the particle arrangement for wax vapour, molten wax, and candle wax.

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

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

Students use provided symbols to write formula and to draw diagrams of different compounds.