Communicating in science resources

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

This task assesses student ability to find the text features of a science report about one of our native birds. The task is essentially a literacy task in the context of scientific writing, and can also be accessed from the English Bank.

Task: Students answer questions about a soil food web. Assessment focus: reading a food web, systems thinking.

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

Task: Use written text about farming's contribution to climate change to complete a flow chart, and answer questions about the two texts. Assessment focus: interpreting, using, and comparing different types of text.

Task: Play a card game to join two sentence fragments to complete a sentence. Assessment focus: a) relationships of elements in a waterway, and b) science vocabulary.

Task: Students play a card game to construct a waterways relationships web. Assessment focus: relationships within a waterways ecosystem.

Task: Students answer questions about a Southern Ocean food web. Assessment focus: interpreting food webs.

Students are provided with a food web based on organisms of the rocky shore and sea. Students use this to answer questions about food chains in the food web.

Task: Read a story about a cat and use the information to draw a food chain. Assessment focus: Using information to construct a food chain.

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

Students use a diagram that shows a food web to answer five questions about the information within the food web.

For this task students use a diagram to explain the different seasons experienced in different hemispheres.

Use knowledge of insulation to answer questions about baked Alaska dessert, and how it compares to a chilly bin. Assessment focus: Interpreting diagrams, interpreting analogies, and using knowledge of insulation.

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

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

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.

Students are provided with a series of six labelled diagrams showing a bean seed germinating and developing into a small plant with leaves. Students write sentences describing what is occuring at each stage.

Using the information provided on unattached and attached ear lobes, students complete a family tree for this genetic trait.

Students are provided with a graph of lizard numbers on an island. They answer three questions about this graph.

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 are given results from an investigation looking at light intensity and its effect on the rate of photosynthesis in two plants. Students are required to draw line graphs of this data and then answer a number of questions pertaining to this.

Task: Design a plant that meets the criteria for a particular environment. Assessment focus: identifying specific features of a plant and explaining how they help it survive in its environment.