No Big Deal

No Big Deal

Pencil and paperOnline interactive
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about identifying evidence to support a main idea.
A main idea that the author David Hill often explores is: "New Zealand's natural environment, and how amazing it is."

Question Change answer

Read the following text that comes from David Hill's book "No Big Deal". Find and highlight details in the text that support the main idea "New Zealand's natural environment, and how amazing it is.". 
  • Main idea
     They walked along a track that wound through tall green bush. The sounds from the Outdoor Pursuits Centre faded away.
    
     'They reckon there are other caves up on those cliffs.' Sia nodded at where steep rock walls towered up on both sides. 'But they're too hard to get to and explore.'
 
     Todd gazed up through the ranks of cool grey trunks.  He imagined silent tunnels leading into darkness.
 
     Awesome!  He couldn't wait to get down into these secret places under the earth.
 
     After another quarter of an hour, they turned a corner, and saw a high wire fence.  Behind the fence, a dark opening led into a hillside.  The cave, Todd realised.
 
     Sia unlocked a gate in the fence, and they went through.  'Helmet lights on,' their instructor told them.  'Move carefully from now on.' As they entered the cave, the world of daylight and blue sky seemed to vanish for ever.  Their lights showed dripping rock walls where moss and a few ferns grew.  Ahead of them, the path sloped down steeply.
 
Task administration: 
This task can be completed with pen and paper or online (without auto marking).
  • Remind students that the main idea is what the author wants readers to understand is important and valued in the text as a whole.
  • You may wish to explain to your students that finding details that relate to the main idea can be hard, but in this resource they can be found if the two parts of the main idea are identified first. Then students identify details that relate to both of these parts. See Next steps.
  • Explain that as long as they can justify their responses, their ideas will be accepted. You may wish to explain that when you justify you give a reason/s to support your thinking.
  • This task can be done individually or in groups. The student task sheet could be enlarged for students to work on together.
  • Responses can be discussed by teacher and student only, or within larger groups. Group discussion has the advantage of giving students opportunities to consider others' ideas and to practise justifying their own.
  • After completing the task, the book could be read as a shared novel.
  • The book comes from the "Kiwi Bites" series, published by Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 2003.
  • This task could form an introduction to David Hill's books.
Level:
3
Curriculum info: 
English, Making meaning, Reading
Key Competencies: 
Thinking, Using language, symbols, and texts
Keywords: 
comprehension, main idea, inference, narrative, evaluating
Description of task: 
The assessment focus is on students' abilities to identify the details in a text that support a given, main idea.
Curriculum Links: 
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading:
This resource helps to identify students’ ability to:
  • locate and summarise ideas

as described in the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading at: http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progressions 

Learning Progression Frameworks
This resource can provide evidence of learning associated with
Making sense of text: processing system, set 4
Reading for literary experience, set 4
within the Reading Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Read more about the Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Answers/responses: 

Everyone brings their own interpretation to text, so the following responses are not definitive.  Accept other responses so long as students can justify why their details support the main idea.

Student-identified details that support the main idea of "New Zealand's amazing natural environment" might include the following:

  • "...tall green bush." [Suggesting a lush natural environment.]
  • "The sounds from the Outdoor Pursuits Centre faded away." [Suggesting the expansiveness of the bush.]
  • "'...there are other caves up on those cliffs.'"
  • "...steep rock walls towered up on both sides."
  • "'...they're too hard to get to and explore.'" [Suggesting a challenging natural environment.]
  • Todd gazed up through the "ranks of cool grey trunks". [Gives a sense of awe about/ or an admiration of the natural environment.]
  • "...silent tunnels leading into darkness."
  • Where Todd thinks the caves are going to be "Awesome".
  • "...these secret places under the earth."
  • "...a dark opening led into a hillside. The cave..."
  • "...the world of daylight and blue sky seemed to vanish for ever."
  • Their lights showed "dripping rock walls where moss and a few ferns grew." [Suggesting a glimpse into another and different natural world.]
  • "...the path sloped down steeply." [Suggesting how deep the cave was.]
Diagnostic and formative information: 

This resource was trialled by 24 Year 6 students. The trial involved small groups of students across 3 primary schools.

Details identified by studentsThe most commonly identified details were:

  • ...these secret places under the earth.
  • ...tall green bush.
  • ...the world of daylight and blue sky seemed to vanish for ever.
  • ...dripping rock walls where moss and a few ferns grew.
  • ...silent tunnels leading into darkness.
Examples of student responses that did not relate to the main idea – New Zealand's amazing natural environment. An analysis of student responses
  • blue sky
  • ferns grew
  • grey trunks
 These responses were not accepted. Students have not understood that the details they identify need to relate to both parts of the main idea:

  1. New Zealand's natural environment.
  2. How amazing that natural environment is.

These responses only relate to one part of the main idea, New Zealand's natural environment.
  • cool grey trunks
  • cool
 These responses were not accepted. Students who identified these details were probably interpreting the word "cool" as meaning "amazing", rather than connecting it with the cold grey colour.Responses that identified "ranks of cool grey trunks" or the whole sentence that it goes with were accepted, as the figurative language creates a sense of awe about the natural environment.
  • high wire fence
  • a track
 These responses were not accepted as they are not examples of New Zealand's natural environment nor do they suggest anything amazing. "A track" would be acceptable if students also identified that it "wound through tall green bush", implying a challenging landscape.
Next steps: 
For students having difficulty identifying details that support the main idea:

Break the task into two steps, i.e., the two parts of the main idea: New Zealand's natural environment and how amazing that environment is.

  1. Have students highlight examples in the text of New Zealand's natural environment, e.g., "bush", "rock walls", "ferns".
  2. With a different colour, highlight the text connected to these examples that make them sound amazing. To help students reject descriptions not related to the main idea, ask students questions like 'Does the description "high wire fence" really tell us about our amazing natural environment?; "ferns grew" tells us a little about our natural environment, but does "ferns grew" make that environment sound amazing?'

To help students identify descriptions and connected text that do relate to the main idea, ask 'How can you

Make links to other David Hill books that have a similar main idea, e.g., "Running Hot", "Cold Comfort", "The High Wind Blows", "Take it Easy", "Impact", and "The Sleeper Wakes" (which has a similar ARB written for it: https://arbs.nzcer.org.nz/resources/sleeper-wakes).