NCEA Level 1 Science

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Overview

Collaborative learning modules

Nature of science

1. Investigating in science

• Develop and carry out more complex investigations, including using models.
• Show an increasing awareness of the complexity of working scientifically, including recognition of multiple variables.
• Begin to evaluate the suitability of the investigative methods chosen.

Living world

Assessments

2. Life processes

• Relate key structural features and functions to the life processes of plants, animals, and micro-organisms and investigate environmental factors that affect these processes.

3. Ecology

• Investigate the impact of natural events and human actions on a New Zealand ecosystem.

4. Evolution

• Explore patterns in the inheritance of genetically controlled characteristics.
• Explain the importance of variation within a changing environment.

Planet earth and beyond

Assessments

5. Earth systems

• Investigate the external and internal processes that shape and change the surface features of New Zealand.

6. Interacting systems

• Develop an understanding of how the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere interact to cycle carbon around Earth.

7. Astronomical systems

• Investigate the interactions between the solar, lunar, and Earth cycles and the effect of these on Earth.

Physical world

Assessments

8. Physical inquiry and physics concepts

• Investigate trends and relationships in physical phenomena (in the areas of mechanics, electricity, electromagnetism, heat, light and waves, and atomic and nuclear physics).
• Demonstrate an understanding of physical phenomena and concepts by explaining and solving questions and problems that relate to straightforward situations.

9. Using physics

• Investigate how physics knowledge is used in a technological or biological application.

Material world

Assessments

10. Properties and changes of matter

• Identify patterns and trends in the properties of a range of groups of substances, for example, acids and bases, metals, metal compounds, and hydrocarbons.
• Explore factors that affect chemical processes.

11. The structure of matter

• Distinguish between atoms, molecules, and ions (includes covalent and ionic bonding).
• Link atomic structure to the organisation of the periodic table.
• Use particle theory to explain factors that affect chemical processes.

12.Chemistry and society

• Investigate how chemical knowledge is used in a technological application of chemistry.