AC9S9I01 Year 9 Science

AC9S9I01 – Year 9 Science: Questioning and predicting

Strand

Science inquiry

Substrand

Questioning and predicting

This Content Descriptor from Year 9 Science provides the specific knowledge and skills students should learn. Use it to plan lessons, create learning sequences, and design assessments that align with the Australian Curriculum v9.

Content Descriptor

develop investigable questions, reasoned predictions and hypotheses to test relationships and develop explanatory models

Elaborations

• discussing what is needed for a question to be investigable or a prediction to be reasoned
• generating investigable questions about the relationships between human body systems and everyday events, such as: ‘How does the intensity of exercise affect heart rate and breathing rate?’
• developing investigable questions to explore an explanatory model, such as: ‘How is sound wave transfer affected by the density of the medium through which it travels? What causes our body temperature to rise when we are ill?’
• discussing why a scientific hypothesis has to be able to be supported or refuted through evidence
• proposing a hypothesis to test an identified relationship, such as: ‘If objects of different temperatures are placed in contact, heat energy will transfer from an object of higher temperature to an object of lower temperature until both objects reach the same temperature’

Achievement Standard This Supports

This Content Descriptor contributes to the following Achievement Standard:

Year 9 ASSCIY9

Year 9 Science Achievement Standard

By the end of Year 9 students explain how body systems provide a coordinated response to stimuli. They describe how the processes of sexual and asexual reproduction enable survival of the species. They explain how interactions within and between Earth’s spheres affect the carbon cycle. They analyse energy conservation in simple systems and apply wave and particle models to describe energy transfer. They explain observable chemical processes in terms of changes in atomic structure, atomic rearrangement and mass. Students explain the role of publication and peer review in the development of scientific knowledge and explain the relationship between science, technologies and engineering. They analyse the different ways in which science and society are interconnected. Students plan and conduct safe, reproducible investigations to test or identify relationships and models. They describe how they have addressed any ethical and intercultural considerations when generating or using primary and secondary data. They select and use equipment to generate and record replicable data with precision. They select and construct appropriate representations to organise, process and summarise data and information. They analyse and connect data and information to identify and explain patterns, trends, relationships and anomalies. They analyse the impact of assumptions and sources of error in methods and evaluate the validity of conclusions and claims. They construct logical arguments based on evidence to support conclusions and evaluate claims. They select and use content, language and text features effectively to achieve their purpose when communicating their ideas, findings and arguments to specific audiences.