Year 2 Science: Every Australian Curriculum Code, Explained

Year 2 Science in the Australian Curriculum is ten content descriptions, and seven of them are word for word identical to Year 1. AC9S2I01 to AC9S2I06 repeat AC9S1I01 to AC9S1I06 exactly. AC9S2H01 repeats AC9S1H01 exactly. Only the three Science Understanding codes are new.

That is not an error in the curriculum and it is not a licence to repeat last year. It means the entire increase in demand for Year 2 lives in the achievement standard rather than in the descriptors, so a program planned only from the content descriptions will be a Year 1 program with new topics in it. This is a working guide to all ten codes: the three that are actually new, what rises in the seven that did not change, the misconception hiding inside each Understanding code, a term-by-term order, and the checks that matter before Year 3, which is where everything moves at once.

What changes this year

The three new codes are all in different sub-strands, and between them they contain the two oddest sentences in primary Science.

Earth arrives in space. AC9S2U01 asks students to “recognise Earth is a planet in the solar system and identify patterns in the changing position of the sun, moon, planets and stars in the sky”. Year 1 had daily and seasonal change happening around you; Year 2 puts you on a planet.

Sound appears, once, and never again in primary. AC9S2U02 is the only sound descriptor in Foundation to Year 6. Physical science then runs heat at Year 3, forces at Year 4, light at Year 5 and electricity at Year 6, and sound does not return.

Materials return after a year off. AC9S2U03 covers physical change without change of composition. Its prerequisite is AC9SFU03 in Foundation, two years earlier, because Year 1 has no chemical science content at all. Expect the object-versus-material distinction to need rebuilding before the change part can be taught.

There is also a subtraction. Year 2 is the only year in Foundation to Year 6 with no biological science content. No living things, no needs, no habitats, no life cycles. Foundation groups plants and animals, Year 1 covers their basic needs, Year 3 compares living and non-living things, and Year 2 sits out. If you are running a whole-school scope and sequence, that gap is intentional and does not need patching.

The year at a glance

Reading the codes

Science codes are AC9 + S + year + strand letter + number, with U for understanding, I for inquiry and H for human endeavour. Version 9 does not label the Understanding sub-strands, so they have to be inferred: AC9S2U01 is Earth and space, AC9S2U02 is physical, AC9S2U03 is chemical, and nothing in Year 2 is biological.

The three new codes

AC9S2U01: Earth is a planet, and the sky has patterns

Read the verbs. Students recognise that Earth is a planet in the solar system, and identify patterns in the changing position of the sun, moon, planets and stars. They do not explain the patterns. Nothing here asks for rotation, orbits, axial tilt or the cause of moon phases: that is AC9S6U02 in Year 6, four years later. The Earth and space thread runs soils and rocks at Year 3, the water cycle at Year 4 and weathering at Year 5 in between, so astronomy genuinely does skip four years.

The practical consequence is that this descriptor cannot be covered in a two-week unit. A pattern in the sky is only visible over weeks of repeated observation, which is why the moon log below starts in Term 1 and the unit itself lands in Term 3.

AC9S2U02: sound energy and vibration

The descriptor asks students to explore different actions to make sounds and how to make a variety of sounds, and to recognise that sound energy causes objects to vibrate. Two jobs, and the first is broader than it sounds: a variety of sounds means changing pitch and volume deliberately, not just producing noise. Rubber bands at different tensions, water at different levels in bottles, straws cut to different lengths.

This is also the only physical science content in primary that students can feel with their hands while it is happening, which makes it the best available vehicle for the inquiry codes. Use it accordingly.

AC9S2U03: physical change without changing composition

Students recognise that materials can be changed physically without changing their material composition, and explore the effect of different actions on materials including bending, twisting, stretching and breaking into smaller pieces. The four named actions are worth keeping, because they are what makes the boundary teachable: all four leave you with the same stuff you started with.

Note what is absent. Melting and dissolving are not named. Chemical change is not in Year 2 at all. Reversible and irreversible change is AC9S6U04, four years later, and change of state with heat is AC9S3U04 next year. Keeping Year 2 to the four named actions is not under-teaching, it is the descriptor.

The seven codes that did not change, and what changes anyway

The inquiry and human endeavour descriptors are unchanged, so the only place the Year 2 expectation is written down is the achievement standard. In practice, five things should look different by the end of the year, and each one is worth planning for explicitly because none of them will show up in a code audit.

• Guidance thins out. AC9S2I05 still says “with guidance”, but the guidance should be a prompt (“was that fair?”) rather than a scaffold. By Term 4, a Year 2 student should raise the fairness question unprompted at least sometimes.
• Tables gain a second variable. AC9S2I04 still says provided tables, and you still draw them, but a Year 1 table records one thing per row and a Year 2 table records two. Bottle, water level, pitch. Band, tension, pitch. This is the direct runway for student-constructed tables and column graphs at AC9S3I04.
• Measurement gets smaller units. AC9S2I03 still says informal measurement, but AC9M2M01 in maths adds “smaller units for accuracy”, and science is where that pays off. Counting in half-blocks this year is the step before scaled instruments at AC9S3I03.
• Writing carries a comparison. AC9S2I06 has the same wording as AC9S1I06, but a Year 1 text reports one result and a Year 2 text should report a relationship: the tighter the band, the higher the sound. That sentence shape is what AC9S3I06 will ask for with an audience attached.
• Human endeavour attaches to prediction. AC9S2H01 includes using patterns to make scientific predictions, and this year there is a genuine pattern to predict from. Once the moon log has a month in it, ask the class to predict next week and then check. That is the descriptor working properly rather than being name-checked.

The three hardest codes in Year 2

AC9S2U03: breaking something is a physical change

The misconception: that physical change means reversible change. This one is usually taught into students rather than arrived at by them, because “physical change can be undone” is a common staffroom shorthand and it is wrong at Year 2.

What you will see: shown a snapped stick of chalk or a torn sheet of paper, students say the material has changed into something new, because you cannot put it back. The descriptor names breaking into smaller pieces as one of its four examples, so the shorthand fails on the curriculum’s own case.

The fix: make the test what is it made of, never can you undo it. Ask the same three questions after every action: what did we do, what does it look like now, what is it still made of. Crushed chalk is still chalk. Torn paper is still paper. Twisted wire is still wire. Then hand over the hard case deliberately, because it is the one that proves the rule: a bag of chalk dust that cannot be reassembled and is still chalk.

AC9S2U02: the drum makes a sound because I hit it

The misconception: that hitting causes the sound directly, with vibration as a separate side effect somebody mentioned.

What you will see: asked why the drum made a sound, students say “because I hit it”. Asked what would stop the sound, they say “stop hitting”. Both answers are true and neither one has vibration in it, so the descriptor is not met even though the lesson looked successful.

The fix: teach the stopping case before the making case. Strike a triangle or a cymbal, let it ring, then grab it. The sound stops instantly while the hitting is long over, which is the only demonstration that separates the two. Then run every instrument through the same pair of questions: what is vibrating, and what happens if I stop it vibrating. Hands on the throat while humming, rice on a drum skin, a ruler over the edge of a desk. The target sentence is “it stops making a sound when it stops vibrating”, and it should come from the student.

AC9S2U01: the sun goes across the sky

The misconception: that the sun and moon move around a stationary Earth. This is what the evidence looks like, so it is a reasonable conclusion rather than a careless one.

What you will see: “The sun goes over us and then goes down.” “The moon comes out at night.” The second one is worth chasing, because the moon is frequently visible in daylight, and a class that has been keeping a moon log will already have recorded it. That recorded contradiction is more useful than any correction you could offer.

The fix: hold the line at the descriptor. Year 2 identifies the pattern, it does not explain it, so the honest teaching move is to name the difference between what we see and what is happening, and then stop. “From here it looks like the sun moves. We are actually on a planet that is turning. You will work out how that produces what we see in Year 6.” A Year 2 student who over-explains with a memorised orbit sentence usually has less understanding than one who can describe the pattern accurately from their own log. Prioritise the log.

What students need to arrive with

The inquiry prerequisites are exact, because the codes are the same: a student who could run AC9S1I01 to AC9S1I06 can run AC9S2I01 to AC9S2I06 on day one. Our guide to the Year 1 Science codes covers what secure looks like at each step, and AC9S1I06, writing findings rather than recounting the lesson, is the one to check first, because it is the newest habit and the least embedded.

The content prerequisites are patchier. AC9S1U02 (daily and seasonal change) leads directly into AC9S2U01, and a class that kept a weather record in Year 1 arrives with the observational habit already built. AC9S2U03, though, reaches back to AC9SFU03 in Foundation for the object and material distinction, and two years is long enough that it should be re-checked rather than assumed. From maths, AC9M2M01 (uniform informal units, and smaller units for accuracy) and AC9M2ST01 (acquiring data by observation and experiment) are the two that Science leans on hardest, both covered in our guide to the Year 2 Maths codes.

What this year sets up

• Year 3 re-bases the whole subject. Every inquiry code changes, and they change together: AC9S3I02 adds planning with scaffolds and identifying the elements of a fair test, AC9S3I03 replaces informal measurement with formal measurement using scaled instruments, AC9S3I04 replaces provided tables with student-constructed tables and simple column graphs, and AC9S3I05 adds drawing conclusions. Human endeavour doubles from one code to two, and Understanding goes from three codes to four.
• AC9S2U03 (physical change) becomes AC9S3U04, the properties of solids and liquids and change of state driven by heat, and then AC9S6U04, reversible and irreversible change. The reversibility idea you carefully avoided this year arrives four years from now, which is exactly why avoiding it matters.
• AC9S2U01 (Earth in the solar system) has no successor until AC9S6U02, the movement of Earth and other planets relative to the sun. Four years.
• AC9S2U02 (sound) has no successor in primary at all. It is the one shot at sound in Foundation to Year 6, so treat it as content to teach properly rather than as a fun term.
• Biological science resumes at AC9S3U01, living and non-living things and life cycles, after a year off.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: sound, and start the moon log. Open AC9S2U02 straight away. It needs no build-up, it produces immediate results, and it re-establishes the full inquiry cycle on content that is genuinely engaging. Teach the stopping case in the first lesson. In parallel, start a moon observation log as a two-minute daily routine from week one, with the shape and the rough position recorded, so that AC9S2U01 has real data waiting for it in Term 3.
2. Term 2: sound as measurement, and the two-column table. Stay on AC9S2U02 but shift the emphasis from making sounds to changing them systematically. Rubber band tension, water level, straw length. This is where AC9S2I04 gains its second variable and AC9S2I03 gains its smaller units, and sound is the ideal content for both because the input is measurable and the output is obvious. Aim AC9S2I06 at relationship sentences: the shorter the straw, the higher the sound.
3. Term 3: materials, and the sky pattern pays off. Teach AC9S2U03 with the three fixed questions and the four named actions, re-checking the object and material distinction first. Alongside it, pull the moon log together for AC9S2U01: what repeats, how long it takes, what will happen next week. Run AC9S2H01 here, because predicting from a pattern is now something the class has evidence to do.
4. Term 4: the bridge to Year 3. Deliberately re-run two investigations from earlier in the year at Year 3 grain, on content students already know so the only new thing is the method. Use a thermometer or a scaled measuring jug instead of informal units (AC9S3I03). Have students draw their own table and turn it into a column graph rather than filling in yours (AC9S3I04). Ask what was kept the same before the trial rather than after (AC9S3I02). Nothing in Term 4 has to be new content, and the students who struggle here are the ones who will struggle in Year 3.

Sound occupies two terms rather than one because it is the only content in the year that can carry the rising inquiry standard, and because it never comes back. Materials and the solar system share Term 3 comfortably, since one is hands-on and short and the other is a log you have already been keeping.

Assessment checkpoints

One diagnostic per strand, each pointing at a named reteach.

• Understanding, chemical. Snap a piece of chalk in front of them and ask what it is made of now. “Still chalk, just in bits” means AC9S2U03 is secure. “It is powder now” or “it changed because you cannot fix it” means reteach with the three fixed questions, and stop using the word reversible.
• Understanding, physical. Ring a triangle and ask how to stop the sound without waiting. Grabbing it, and saying it stops vibrating, means AC9S2U02 is secure. “Stop hitting it” means the stopping demonstration has not landed: reteach with rice on a drum so the vibration is visible rather than felt.
• Understanding, Earth and space. Ask what the moon will look like next week and how they know. An answer that points at the log and its repeat means AC9S2U01 is secure. A guess, or a memorised orbit sentence with no reference to the observations, means the log has been collected rather than read: graph it or lay it out in a circle before adding more.
• Inquiry, recording. Ask them to set up a table for testing three rubber bands, with your table off the wall. Two columns, one for what was changed and one for what happened, means AC9S2I04 is at the top of the Year 2 range and Year 3 will be manageable. One column means run more two-variable tables in Term 4 rather than in Year 3.
• Inquiry, fairness. Run a visibly unfair comparison, such as a thick band pulled hard against a thin band pulled gently, and say nothing. An unprompted objection means AC9S2I05 is at standard. No objection until asked means the prompt “was that fair?” still needs to be said out loud after every trial for another term.
• Human endeavour. Ask who uses a pattern to predict something in their job. A named person and the pattern they use, such as a fisher and the tides, means AC9S2H01 is secure. “Scientists” on its own means the two-minute naming habit is not running at the end of lessons.

Records and evidence

Year 2 has an evidence problem that Year 1 does not: because seven codes are identical, a folder of Year 2 work can be indistinguishable from a folder of Year 1 work, and for a registration reviewer that is a genuine question rather than a technicality. Two things fix it. Put the code and the date in every caption, so “AC9S2I04 and AC9S2U02, two-column table, band tension against pitch, 14 August” rather than “Science: sound”. And keep one artefact per term that could only be Year 2 work: the moon log, a two-variable table, a relationship sentence rather than a single result. The Term 4 bridge investigations are especially good evidence, because they show the standard rising inside descriptors that did not.

Our guides to which curriculum your state uses and state-by-state registration requirements cover which code set applies to you and what reviewers ask for. In Victoria and New South Wales the equivalents are the Victorian Foundation to Level 2 Science codes and the NSW K–6 Science and Technology outcomes. Both band multiple years into one set of codes, which sidesteps the identical-descriptor problem entirely and creates a different one: you have to show the band covered rather than the year.

Because the inquiry codes repeat, the content wrapper does more work in Year 2 than in any other primary year: it is the main thing stopping the fourth investigation of the term from feeling like the third. Using an interest as the way in costs nothing against the descriptor, and a child who is done with rubber bands will happily test which of six materials makes the best lightsaber hum. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these ten codes, pitched at Year 2 and wrapped in whatever the child is currently obsessed with, with the AC9 code recorded in the footer. Try it free.

Australian Curriculum content descriptions are © ACARA and licensed under CC BY 4.0. Quoted here unmodified. ACARA does not endorse this product. Always verify against the current content descriptions and achievement standards at australiancurriculum.edu.au.

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