Australia · ACARA Content Descriptions
Foundation Science
A foundational journey through the natural and physical world, fostering curiosity through hands-on observation and sensory exploration. Students develop basic scientific inquiry skills by questioning, predicting, and recording their findings about living things, materials, and the environment.
Living Wonders
Students explore the basic needs of plants and animals and how their external features help them survive in their environments.
Investigating what animals and plants require to stay alive and grow healthy.
Comparing the different physical features of animals and how they use them to move and eat.
Exploring local environments and how living things rely on their homes for shelter.
Material World
An investigation into the properties of everyday materials and how those properties determine their use.
Using the five senses to describe and group objects based on their texture, color, and strength.
Testing how different materials react when they come into contact with water.
Observing how materials change when they are squashed, stretched, or mixed together.
Sky and Weather
Observing and tracking changes in the daily weather and the appearance of the sky.
Recording daily weather conditions and discussing how they affect our choices.
Identifying visible features in the day and night sky and how they change.
Connecting weather patterns to the broader cycle of the four seasons in Australia.
Push and Pull
An introduction to forces through the investigation of how objects move and change speed.
Exploring the different ways objects can move, such as rolling, sliding, and bouncing.
Investigating how a push force can start, stop, or change the direction of an object.
Identifying pull forces in everyday life and comparing them to pushes.
Paddock to Plate
Understanding where our food and resources come from and how they are processed.
Identifying which foods come from plants and which come from animals.
Exploring how simple ingredients are changed into the food we eat.
Thinking about how we can reduce waste and look after our resources.
The Little Scientist
A capstone unit focusing on the skills of scientific inquiry: questioning, predicting, and communicating.
Learning how to turn curiosity into a scientific question that can be tested.
Practicing the skill of guessing what might happen based on what we already know.
Using drawings, labels, and talk to show others what we have learned during an investigation.