Marlborough Boys’ College

Year 9 Science - Mātauranga Pūtaiao

Course Description

Teacher in Charge: Dr E. Attridge.

We need people to be creative, critical thinkers and find innovative solutions to problems. As a subject, science helps you investigate systemically and it will help you to develop a clearer understanding of aspects of the world around you. It's not just about becoming a scientist (although being one is pretty cool!), science enables you to understand how the world works and ideas on how to fix it.

A good scientist asks questions such as:

What did I see?
What might that mean?
How can I check that?
What evidence do I have?
How many times was the experiment repeated?
How were the measurements taken?
How confident am I of their accuracy?
Would these results always be true?

Aspects of digital technology are covered in all our science topics. Practical work is also an essential part of the course and you are expected to learn a variety of skills.

Our course topics currently (we are in the process of updating them!) include:

Being a Scientist – Kaiputaiao
Astrobiology – Mātai Arorangi Me Te Koiora
Food - Kai
Air that we breathe - Hāngia Hau Takiwā
Seeing is believing - Ā-Kanohi Te Kitenga
Engineering - Pūkaha

But we are constantly working on developing new ones.

Learning Areas:

Year 9, Science - Mātauranga Pūtaiao

Assessment Information

Assessment is continual and based on a combination of tests, homework and contributions in class. The curriculum level and sub-level is reported for each topic as an overall teacher judgement.