Communicating in science resources

Task: Describe how features of the New Zealand long-tailed bat help it to survive. Assessment focus: identifying features for survival.

Data from a test of comparative strengths of different magnets is provided. Students graph the data and make a conclusion.

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

Task: Complete a drawing of things found in or near a waterway, and describe relationships between them. Assessment focus: interdependence in a waterways environment.

Task: Read a table to answer questions about when birds are likely to visit a native garden for food. Assessment focus: interpreting a table.

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

For this task students are provided with some weather information that includes the UV index. Students interpret this information to answer three short answer questions.

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

Four different vertebrate animals are illustrated. For each animal the student needs to name the body part used by each animal to move, and then explain how this part makes the animal move.

Students identify the solids, liquids, and gases in three short passages.

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.

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.

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

Students use information on nine elements from the periodic table to answer four short questions.

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.

Students are asked four short questions that explore their understanding of the Earth's rotation, Earth's revolution, and seasons.

In this task, students look for patterns in electron arrangement in the periodic table. They use their ideas to place missing elements in the table, answer some questions about the patterns, and use the patterns to predict the properties of some elements.

Students answer three questions by interpreting a weather map and other forecast information.

A bar graph showing the percentage of endangered species threatened by predation, competition, and/or habitat loss is given. Students use this graph to answer questions and explain the terms; predation, competition, and habitat loss.

Task: Identify direction of currents and explain reason for pattern. Assessment focus: convection patterns.

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 diagrams to answer questions about atoms, elements, compounds, and mixtures. They are then asked to use these words to describe the differences between diagrams.

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.

Task: Answer two questions about judging model aeroplanes. Assessment focus: reading tables.

Students use keywords to label a simple circuit, and then explain how someone would know if the circuit is on or off.