Communicating in science resources

Task: Answer a multiple choice question and explain the reason for choice. Assessment focus: simple circuits and switches.

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

Students are provided with a map of NZ showing the average annual rainfall in different areas. Students interpret this information to answer three short answer questions, and then construct a bar graph that shows the rainfall for nine North Island locations.

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.

Students interpret two cartoon-style drawings of the enhanced greenhouse effect and write a short description of the artist’s message, as they see this.

For this practical, students use different sized balls to demonstrate and explain solar and lunar eclipses.

Students draw a graph from some information they are given about the heating of meths in a water bath. Students then explain in terms of particles what is happening for the sloping section and the flat section of the graph.

Task: Use a diagram and fact file to answer questions about sharks' fins. Assessment focus: adaptations of sharks to facilitate movement in water.

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 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: 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.

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.

This task assesses student ability to find the text features of a science report about moa.

Task: Students classify each of six drawn whales as either toothed or baleen whales. They then divide each group further by using a key. Assessment focus: Interpreting representations.

Task: use a key to identify a fish, then complete a key to identify shellfish. Assessment focus: Interpreting representations - classification keys.