Communicating in science resources

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.

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

Task: Answer two questions about melting and two questions about dissolving. Assessment focus: describe and explain melting and dissolving.

Task: Complete a diagram of part of the water cycle and answer a question about rain. Assessment focus: Question a) – the water cycle and conventions of diagrams; question b) – evaporation of a solution.

Students to apply their understanding of basic wave behaviour at the sea shore to make an inference about waves in a different but analogous context: to predict where the worst damage might occur in an earthquake.

Task: Answer 2 multiple choice questions about how we would see Moon from Earth if its orbit changed. Assessment focus: relationship of Sun, Earth, and Moon.

Task: interpret data from a table and complete two calculations. The context is balancing a see-saw. Assessment focus: using a scientific formula to identify trends.

Task: Complete a graph from data in a table, and answer two questions. Assessment focus: speed and stopping.