Year 3 · Science · Science understanding
AC9S3U01
compare characteristics of living and non-living things and examine the differences between the life cycles of plants and animals
The content description above is Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)’s own wording, reproduced unmodified from the Australian Curriculum v9.0, read in August 2026, and licensed CC BY 4.0.
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Taught alongside it
The rest of Science understanding in Year 3.
compare the observable properties of soils, rocks and minerals and investigate why they are important Earth resources
AC9S3U03identify sources of heat energy and examine how temperature changes when heat energy is transferred from one object to another
AC9S3U04investigate the observable properties of solids and liquids and how adding or removing heat energy leads to a change of state
The same idea, year by year
Where AC9S3U01 comes from and where it goes, for a student working below or above Year 3.
- Year 2AC9S2U01recognise 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 2AC9S2U02explore different actions to make sounds and how to make a variety of sounds, and recognise that sound energy causes objects to vibrate
- Year 2AC9S2U03recognise 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
- Year 4AC9S4U01explain the roles and interactions of consumers, producers and decomposers within a habitat and how food chains represent feeding relationships
- Year 4AC9S4U02identify sources of water and describe key processes in the water cycle, including movement of water through the sky, landscape and ocean; precipitation; evaporation; and condensation
- Year 4AC9S4U03identify how forces can be exerted by one object on another and investigate the effect of frictional, gravitational and magnetic forces on the motion of objects
- Year 4AC9S4U04examine the properties of natural and made materials including fibres, metals, glass and plastics and consider how these properties influence their use
Planning against AC9S3U01?
Daily Work Pad reads codes like this one out of your forward plan and carries them onto your lessons and worksheets. The pilot is invite-only for now.