Communicating in science resources

Task: students explain links between a bird's feet and its lifestyle.

Task: Students interpret a graph to answer questions, and use background knowledge to justify their responses. Assessment focus: control of body temperature in different types of animals.

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.

For this NEMP task students use a key to name five small animals. They answer a question about the gas animals need to survive.

Students are provided with an unfinished graph and asked to identify what three things are needed so that the graph is then complete. Students are also asked to identify the type of graph.

Using illustrations from five different beech trees and a key, students are asked to identify which type of beech tree each leaf comes from.

Students use a diagram showing similar and dissimilar characteristics of reptiles, birds, and mammals, to answer questions regarding these features.

Students use a chart that identifies some birds' eggs to answer short response questions.

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

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

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

Task: identify micro-organisms. Assessment focus: using an identification key

This task is about describing the behaviour of light rays.

Students answer questions about how a road moves after an earthquake.

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.

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.

This resource requires students to process information on an earthquake. This entails calculating the distance that the recording stations are from an earthquake's epicentre, locating the epicentre, calculating the magnitude, and answering general questions on earthquakes.

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.

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.

Students are asked to explain why the Southern Cross appears not to be in the same place in the night sky that it was a few months previously.

Students write a story about the water cycle using a given sequence of events that take place.

Students are given a graph that shows how many days it took for bread placed in different areas to grow mould. Students use this graph to answer three short questions.

For this practical task students are assessed on their ability to record their observations of the decomposition of a cut slice of pumpkin over a two week time period.

Pictures are given of the life cycles of three different animals (hawk, turtle and deer). Students identify which stage the animal's survival is most in danger and give explanation of why it is not safe. Students also give one special feature that helps this animal survive at this time.