Year 3 Science: Every Australian Curriculum Code, Explained

Year 3 Science in the Australian Curriculum is twelve content descriptions, up from ten, and every single one of them is newly worded. That is unusual. Year 2 repeated seven of Year 1’s codes verbatim, and Year 4 will repeat eight of Year 3’s. Year 3 repeats nothing.

This is the re-base year, and it re-bases the whole subject at once: informal measurement becomes formal measurement with scaled instruments, provided tables become student-built tables and column graphs, considering whether something was fair becomes identifying the elements of a fair test, and Science as a Human Endeavour doubles from one code to two. The phrase with guidance, which appears somewhere in the inquiry strand in every year from Foundation to Year 2, disappears completely. This is a working guide to all twelve codes: what each strand is now asking for, the three descriptors that are hardest to get right, a term-by-term order that accounts for the Southern Hemisphere seasons, and the checks that tell you whether a student is ready for Year 4.

What changes this year

Six shifts, and they land together rather than one at a time. A student who was comfortable in Year 2 can be visibly struggling by week four of Year 3, and it is almost never the content.

• Measurement becomes formal. AC9S3I03 asks for “formal measurements using familiar scaled instruments”. Thermometers, rulers, measuring cylinders, scales. The blocks and handspans of AC9S2I03 are finished.
• Students build the representation. AC9S3I04 asks students to “construct and use representations, including tables, simple column graphs and visual or physical models”. Year 2 filled in a table you drew. Year 3 draws it.
• Fair testing arrives properly. AC9S3I02 asks for planning and conducting investigations using provided scaffolds, “including identifying the elements of fair tests”. Year 1 and Year 2 only asked students to consider whether an investigation was fair after the fact.
• Conclusions become a requirement. AC9S3I05 adds “draw conclusions”, which is a different act from comparing results. It is the year’s quietest change and the one most often skipped.
• Human endeavour doubles. AC9S3H01 is about how people use data to develop scientific explanations, and AC9S3H02 about how people use those explanations to meet a need or solve a problem. Together they are a much more specific ask than Year 2’s single “people use science in their daily lives” code.
• All four sub-strands run in one year. Understanding goes from three codes to four, and for the first time biological, Earth and space, physical and chemical are all present simultaneously.

The predictions change too, in a way that is easy to read past. AC9S2I01 asked for predictions “based on experiences”. AC9S3I01 asks for predictions “based on observations”. That is the difference between what I already believe and what I just saw, and it is the whole justification for making students record data before they predict from it.

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 are inferred: AC9S3U01 is biological, AC9S3U02 is Earth and space, AC9S3U03 is physical and AC9S3U04 is chemical.

Strand by strand

Science understanding (AC9S3U01 to AC9S3U04)

The four Understanding codes are not four independent units, because two of them are the same content approached from different sides. AC9S3U03 covers sources of heat energy and how temperature changes when heat is transferred between objects. AC9S3U04 covers the observable properties of solids and liquids and how adding or removing heat energy leads to a change of state. Teaching them apart means running two sets of thermometer investigations and building the heat vocabulary twice. Teach them as one heat unit and the second code is largely free.

AC9S3U01 is also two jobs in one descriptor: comparing characteristics of living and non-living things, and examining the differences between plant and animal life cycles. The second half is where programs go thin. A butterfly life cycle covers the animal case and nothing else, and the descriptor is explicitly comparative, so a plant life cycle has to be observed too. That takes a term, which is why seeds go in early.

AC9S3U02 is the most underrated code in the year. Soils, rocks and minerals compared by observable properties, plus why they matter as Earth resources. It is the ideal content for AC9S3I04, because rock properties sort, count and graph naturally, and it is the cheapest content in the year to resource.

Science inquiry (AC9S3I01 to AC9S3I06)

The six codes are still one cycle, but three of them have shifted the work from the teacher to the student, and the pacing has to reflect that. Do not run six full cycles in Term 1 at the new grain; run the cycle with the new elements introduced one at a time.

Two qualifiers are load-bearing in the other direction, and they protect you from over-teaching. AC9S3I02 says provided scaffolds: the student plans inside a structure you supply, they do not design an investigation from a blank page. It also says identifying the elements of fair tests, not designing a fair test unaided. AC9S3I04 says simple column graphs, which means one categorical variable and a count, drawn on paper with axes you may still be labelling for them in Term 1.

AC9S3I06 has quietly changed target. Year 2 asked students to communicate “observations, findings and ideas”; Year 3 asks for “findings and ideas”, and adds “for identified purposes and audiences”. Observations have dropped off the list. A Year 3 science text that says what happened is no longer sufficient: it has to say what was found out, and it has to be aimed at someone.

Science as a human endeavour (AC9S3H01 and AC9S3H02)

Two codes, and they are a sequence rather than a pair. AC9S3H01 is data to explanation: people collected observations, and the explanation came out of the observations. AC9S3H02 is explanation to application: because we understand this, we can do something about that.

The heat unit carries both cleanly, which is another reason to keep it together. People measured how quickly houses lost heat (data), worked out that trapped air slows the transfer (explanation), and that is why insulation batts exist and why a wetsuit works (need solved). Run that arc explicitly once and both codes have real evidence behind them, rather than a poster about famous scientists.

The three hardest codes in Year 3

AC9S3I02: the elements of a fair test

The misconception: that fair means everybody is treated well. Eight-year-olds have four years of playground training in exactly that meaning of the word, and the science meaning arrives with no warning.

What you will see: asked whether the test was fair, students say yes because everyone got a turn, or because nobody cheated, or because both groups had the same number of people. Separately, when running their own trials, they change two things at once and cannot see the problem: the second cup had more water and was in the sun, and the conclusion drawn is about the sun.

The fix: stop using the bare word fair and replace it with a sentence frame students say out loud before every trial: same, same, same, different. Name the three things being kept the same and the one thing being changed, out loud, every time, before anything is measured. Then use the strongest diagnostic available, which is a deliberately broken test: set up a comparison with two variables changed, run it, and ask what the result proves. A student who says you cannot tell which one did it has AC9S3I02. A student who confidently names one cause does not, no matter how well they can recite the definition.

AC9S3U03: heat, cold, and what a jumper does

The misconception: that cold is a substance that moves into things, and that warm objects generate their own heat.

What you will see: “Shut the door, you are letting the cold in.” “The jumper makes you warm.” Asked which is colder, a metal chair leg or a wooden one in the same room, almost every class says metal, and they are describing a real sensation that has nothing to do with temperature. Wrap a jumper around a bottle of iced water, ask what will happen, and most of the class predicts it will warm up.

The fix: run the metal-and-wood comparison as the opening lesson of the unit, with predictions committed before the thermometer comes out. Both read the same temperature, the class is genuinely surprised, and the question of why one feels colder is the question the unit exists to answer. Then do the jumper around the iced water with a thermometer inside it and a second bottle bare, measured every ten minutes for an hour. The insulated one warms up more slowly, which no student predicts and which cannot be explained by the jumper making things warm. From there, the language to insist on is transfer language: heat moves from the warmer thing to the cooler thing, and a jumper slows the move. There is no such thing as letting the cold in.

AC9S3U01: if it moves, it is alive

The misconception: that movement, growth or activity is what makes something living. It is the single most durable misconception in primary biology and it survives being told the correct answer.

What you will see: fire is alive because it moves, grows and needs food. A car is alive because it drinks petrol and moves. The sun is alive because it gives out energy. Running the same list the other way, a seed is not alive because it is not doing anything, and a tree is often ruled out too. Students can recite a list of characteristics of living things and still sort the cards wrong five minutes later, because the recited list is not what they are actually using to decide.

The fix: make reproduction the deciding characteristic rather than movement, and build the sort around the hard cases instead of the easy ones. Dog, rock and chair prove nothing. Fire, a car, a seed, a fallen leaf, a river and yeast in warm water are the cards worth arguing over. Insist on the criterion each time (which characteristic put it in that group), and use the seed to break the movement rule: plant it, watch it, then ask when it became alive. It did not.

What students need to arrive with

From Year 2 Science: AC9S2I04, filling in a two-variable table, is the direct prerequisite for constructing one at AC9S3I04, and AC9S2U03 (physical change without change of composition) is the prerequisite for AC9S3U04, because change of state is exactly the case that tests whether that idea held. Our guide to the Year 2 Science codes sets out what secure looks like at each of them, and it also explains why so little seems to have been added in Year 2: seven of its ten codes repeat Year 1 verbatim.

From outside Science, the two prerequisites that actually gate Year 3 are both in maths. AC9M3M02, measuring and comparing objects using familiar metric units and instruments with labelled markings, is precisely what AC9S3I03 requires, and a student who cannot read a scale between the markings will produce data that no amount of good science teaching can rescue. AC9M3ST02, creating and comparing different graphical representations, is what AC9S3I04 leans on. Both are covered in our guide to the Year 3 Maths codes. Sequence Science after them where you can, or accept that you are teaching them in the Science lesson. For AC9S3I06, the relevant partner is AC9E3LY06, planning, creating, editing and publishing informative texts, in our guide to the Year 3 English codes: the purpose-and-audience clause that appears in the Science code this year is the same clause, and it should be taught once.

What this year sets up

• Year 4 repeats the inquiry strand verbatim. AC9S4I01 to AC9S4I06 and AC9S4H01 to AC9S4H02 are word for word identical to their Year 3 equivalents, so eight of Year 4’s twelve codes are unchanged. Everything you fail to establish this year has one more year of grace, and Year 5 does not offer a third.
• AC9S3U01 (living things, life cycles) becomes AC9S4U01, the roles of consumers, producers and decomposers and how food chains represent feeding relationships. The living and non-living sort is the prerequisite for producers and decomposers making any sense.
• AC9S3U04 (change of state) becomes AC9S5U04, explaining the properties of solids, liquids and gases by modelling the motion and arrangement of particles, and then AC9S6U04, reversible and irreversible change. Note that gases are not in the Year 3 descriptor at all: it says solids and liquids.
• AC9S3U02 (soils, rocks and minerals) becomes AC9S5U02, weathering, erosion, transportation and deposition, with the Year 4 water cycle (AC9S4U02) sitting in between as the mechanism.
• AC9S3U03 (heat energy) is the start of the energy thread that runs to AC9S5U03 (light) and AC9S6U03 (energy transfer and transformation in electrical circuits).

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: living things, and formal measurement. Open AC9S3U01 with the living and non-living sort using the hard cards, and plant seeds in week two so the plant life cycle has three terms to happen in. Introduce AC9S3I03 here on plant growth, because measuring a stem in centimetres each week is the gentlest possible way into scaled instruments and it matches what AC9M3M02 is doing in maths. Hold the fair test back entirely. One new thing at a time, and this term’s new thing is the ruler.
2. Term 2: soils, rocks and minerals, and building the graph. AC9S3U02, which is cheap to resource and sorts naturally. This is the term for AC9S3I04: students construct their own tables of observable properties and turn a count into a simple column graph. Run a settling or permeability test as the first fair test of the year, because with soils the variable to hold constant is obvious. Attach AC9S3H01 here, since geology is explanation built directly out of data.
3. Term 3: heat, in the cold. AC9S3U03 and AC9S3U04 as a single unit, and the fair test in full at AC9S3I02. In most of Australia Term 3 is the coldest part of the year, which makes insulation investigations genuinely motivated rather than notional, and gives you a bigger temperature difference between inside and outside to work with. Open with metal and wood, run the jumper around iced water, then move to melting and freezing for AC9S3U04. Close with AC9S3H02: what problem does this explanation let people solve.
4. Term 4: life cycles close, and writing for a reader. The Term 1 plants have now flowered and set seed, so the plant half of AC9S3U01 can finally be compared against the animal half, which is the comparison the descriptor actually asks for. Term 4 is also where AC9S3I06 should carry real weight: a written report of the Term 3 heat investigation, aimed at a named audience such as next year’s Year 3 class or a school newsletter, with a conclusion in it rather than a recount.

The fair test sits in Term 2 rather than Term 1 for a specific reason. It is the hardest new demand of the year, and introducing it at the same time as scaled instruments guarantees that students will fail at both and you will not know which. Formal measurement first, on content with no fairness problem in it, then fairness on content where the variable is obvious, then both together in Term 3 on content that is genuinely surprising.

Assessment checkpoints

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

• Understanding, biological. Hand over cards for fire, a seed, a car and yeast, and ask for living and non-living with a reason each. Reproduction as the deciding criterion means AC9S3U01 is secure. Movement or growth as the criterion means reteach with the hard cards only, and use the planted seed to break the movement rule.
• Understanding, physical. Ask what a jumper does to a bottle of iced water. Slows the warming, because heat moves from warm to cool, means AC9S3U03 is secure. “Warms it up” or “keeps the cold in” means the transfer language has not replaced the everyday language: rerun the measurement with the two bottles and let the data do it.
• Understanding, chemical. Ask whether melted chocolate is still chocolate, then whether it can be got back. Yes to both, with heat named as what did it, means AC9S3U04 is secure. Uncertainty about the first question means the Year 2 idea underneath (AC9S2U03, composition does not change) needs rebuilding before change of state can sit on it.
• Understanding, Earth and space. Hand over three unlabelled rocks and ask which would be best for a garden path and why. Reasons drawn from observed properties mean AC9S3U02 is secure. Reasons drawn from appearance alone, or from which one looks nicest, mean the properties were named but never tested.
• Inquiry, fair testing. Show a comparison with two variables changed and ask what it proves. “You cannot tell which one caused it” means AC9S3I02 is secure. A confident single cause means reteach with same, same, same, different said out loud before every trial for a full term.
• Inquiry, representation and conclusions. Give a small set of results and ask for a graph and one sentence about what it shows. Axes labelled, plus a sentence that goes beyond restating the tallest bar, means AC9S3I04 and AC9S3I05 are both secure. A graph with no conclusion is the most common Year 3 outcome and it means the conclusion step is being treated as optional: require the sentence every single time before the work is accepted.

Records and evidence

Year 3 is the first year where Science produces evidence that looks like science. Graphs with axes, tables students built, temperature readings taken over an hour, a written report with a conclusion in it. Keep the raw data sheets as well as the neat write-ups, because a data sheet with a scaled instrument reading on it is direct evidence of AC9S3I03 and a neat write-up is not. Caption with the code and date: “AC9S3I02 and AC9S3U03, fair test, insulation, 14 August” rather than “Science: keeping warm”.

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 Levels 3 and 4 Science band and the NSW K–6 Science and Technology outcomes, where fair testing sits at Stage 2 in ST2-PQU-01 and arrives at almost exactly the same point in a student’s schooling as it does here.

One practical note on Year 3 specifically. The new demands are all procedural, which means the content is free to be anything that produces measurable results, and students who have just been handed four new procedures at once will engage with them far more willingly on content they chose. Using an interest as the way in costs nothing against the descriptor: a fair test on which lolly dissolves fastest teaches AC9S3I02 exactly as well as a fair test on soil. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these twelve codes, pitched at Year 3 and wrapped in whatever the student is currently interested in, 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.

FAQ