This resource was trialled by 30 Year 6 students. The trial involved small groups of students across four schools.

Distinguishing between important and relatively unimportant information – Most students correctly identified two out of the three pieces of important information.Although most trial students correctly identified two of the important pieces of information, half also identified one particular piece of relatively unimportant information. The two correct pieces of information they easily identified were 'You need to dress very warmly to go outside in the snow' and 'Snow can cause problems for people'. The piece of information that half the students incorrectly identified was 'Peter's snow pants and jacket are thick and heavy', whereas the other correct piece of important information was 'Knowing the best ways to play in the snow', which about a third of the students identified.

The emphasis on the clothing in the visual text on page 14 could have swayed half the students who made an inappropriate choice about the relative importance of this information. However, these students failed to understand that Peter's snow pants and jacket are thick and heavy is just one of the clothing examples that can be subsumed by the option which summarises all of page 14, 'You need to dress very warmly to go outside in the snow'.Similarly, students who incorrectly identified 'Sledding downhill is the best fun thing to do in the snow' and 'Building forts in the snow', failed to see these as minor pieces of information that could be grouped under 'Knowing the best ways to play in the snow'. One student who initially chose 'Knowing the best ways to play in the snow', was then swayed inappropriately by her own experience and crossed this out saying "All that matters is what you need to wear".

One student who correctly identified all pieces of important information justified her choices from evidence in the text. For example:

	You need to dress very warmly to go outside in the snow. Because it is so cold.
	Knowing the best ways to play in the snow. Because when you throw snow balls at someone it might hurt. The kids know how to build snow forts too.
	Snow can cause problems for people. Because it's hard and slippery and could give you bruises. There's also so much snow that it can block footpaths and roads.

This self-generated self-assessment example could be used by teachers as a "next steps" idea.

Important information:

• 'You need to dress very warmly to go outside in the snow' is a summary of all of page 14, of both the written and the visual texts;
• 'Knowing the best ways to play in the snow' is the main topic of pages 15, 16, and17; and
• 'Snow can cause problems for people' is mentioned on most pages, for example:

Page 13: Because it snows for "almost half the year" the temperatures are very cold; "Before anyone goes outside, they have to check the thermometer to see how cold it is."Page 14: "At that temperature, your skin will freeze very quickly."; "It takes ages to put on all his gear."; Some of his clothing is heavy; "He has boots lined with thick felt so that his toes don't freeze. The boots are very bulky and hard to walk in."; "He can't go outside without mittens, because his fingers would start to hurt in just a few seconds."; Peter's face could get frostbitten.Page 15: The snow is hard so it's like rocks; Crashes can happen when you are sledding because people are going so fast on the icy and slippery snow.Page 18: "shovelling snow off the paths and driveways is hard work..."; Snow makes the paths slippery (this could happen to the roads too and cause accidents); Sometimes there's so much snow on the roads that huge trucks have to take it away (the picture also shows this).

Relatively unimportant information:

• 'Peter's snow pants and jacket are thick and heavy' is mentioned once on page 14. As stated previously, they are one example of the clothing worn for snowy conditions;
• 'Sledding downhill is the best fun thing to do in the snow' is mentioned only once on page 15; and
• 'Building forts in the snow' is mentioned within four lines on page 16 and some of the pictures capture this activity.

Finding the main idea:

Just over a third of students correctly chose 'People know what they need to do so that they can enjoy living in a cold place' as the main idea.

Half of the students incorrectly identified the main idea as 'Living in a cold place can be a nuisance. The clothing people have to wear is thick and heavy'. They appeared to use the one piece of information they incorrectly identified as important in a), i.e., 'Peter's snow pants and jacket are thick and heavy', as the basis of their decision at b). These students were also inappropriately influenced by their own experience and therefore responded to the subjective content of this main idea option. These students do not understand that a main idea cannot be based on a personal response to text and also cannot be expressed in two sentences.

It cannot be assumed that those students who correctly identified the main idea 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 a text presents. Students are also scaffolded towards rejecting the three relatively unimportant pieces of information in a) because these pieces of information are given considerably less weight in the text than the three pieces of important information.