Great-grandpa
- Remind the students that the main idea is what the author wants readers to understand is important and valued in the text as a whole.
- Explain to the students that finding the main idea is hard, but that it can be found if they first work out what information is important to the text. Explain that important information will be mentioned more than unimportant information.
- Explain to the students that a) assesses if they understand which information is important. Tell the students that first they need to read the story "Great-grandpa", pages 11 to 14, then select the three pieces of information they think are most important.
- Explain to the students that b) assesses if they understand where the important information is in the text. Tell the students that they will need to go back to the text to help them decide which of their three pieces of important information comes first in the text, which comes second, and which comes third.
- Explain to the students that c) assesses if they understand what the main idea is. Tell the students that they need to think about the important information in the text, then select the main idea.
- The task can be done individually or in groups.
- Responses can be discussed by student and teacher only, or with a larger group. Group discussion has the advantage of giving students opportunities to consider others' ideas and to practise justifying their own.
- use comprehension strategies
- evaluate ideas and information
as described in the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading at: http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progressions.
| a) |
Student identifies the three most important pieces of information:
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| b) |
Student correctly orders the three most important pieces of information:
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| c) | Student identifies the main idea of the story:People can use what they have learnt to change how they live, and this can change the world. |
In this task, students are supported towards rejecting three relatively unimportant pieces of information because these pieces of information are given considerably less weight in the text than the three pieces of important information. Overall, about a third of trial students correctly identified the three important details. The first and third details were correctly recognised by most students as being unimportant. However, the sixth given detail "taking Great-grandpa's pipe and tobacco tin away to help him stop smoking" was incorrectly seen as important by two thirds of students. Students justified this choice by saying that this action illustrated the boy as helping Great-grandpa to make a difference/change
Task b) Matching the important information identified in a) with a particular part of the text
This question is designed to check if students guessed at a). Answering a) correctly, but incorrectly sequencing the three important pieces of information in b), might suggest that students guessed their response to a). Alternatively, they may have answered b) incorrectly as a result of not rereading the text.
Task c) Finding the main idea
Just over a half of trial students correctly identified the main idea "people can use what they have learnt to change how they live, and this can change the world". About a third of this group correctly identified the main idea without completely identifying all the correct details at a).
The first main idea option "people should not smoke. Wars damage peoples' lives" was chosen by about a third of students. These students appeared to use prior knowledge as the basis for their decision as they saw the narrative as having an anti-smoking message. These students had already incorrectly identified the sixth given detail at a) about taking Great-grandpa's pipe and tobacco away. One student justified this choice by saying it would be too hard to make everybody change, so people should start with themselves. Overall, these responses demonstrate an over-reliance on personal responses to text. They also highlight that students failed to recognise that a main idea cannot be expressed in two unrelated sentences.
Although over half of trial students correctly identified the main idea, it cannot be assumed that they can do so independently because this resource provides considerable scaffolding. For example, in a) the students only have to choose between six pieces of information, whereas if they were independently finding the main idea they would need to choose between all the information the text presents.
- "Great-grandpa says on page 13 "war is a terrible thing". He goes on to say that because of war he lost his hearing and started smoking. He then says "I was one of the lucky ones", meaning that he did not suffer as much as some of the other soldiers, and the storyteller tells us that Great-grandpa shakes his head sadly. That's probably because he's remembering how terrible it all was. Then on page 14 the storyteller tells us about the look in Great-grandpa's eyes now. I'm looking at the visual text on page 12 and noticing the difference between the look in Great-grandpa's eyes from when he was a young soldier to now. This tells me that he is saddened by what he experienced in the war and the storyteller backs me up by saying on page 14 that Great-grandpa knows what war is like."
For those students who think that the sixth given detail is important, ask them to note where and how often taking Great-grandpa's pipe and tobacco away is mentioned (once, on page 14). Once students have done this, they are likely to see that the relatively unimportant information gets little mention in the text, and will therefore have evidence to support the rejection of the ideas as unimportant.
Details that are mentioned more often are identified, grouped, and then combined to form the main idea. In combining the groups of details to form a main idea, students will see that the main idea also cannot be two unrelated sentences.
The value in rereading text to check and possibly change their initial thinking needs to be emphasised to students.