Parcel

Parcel

Pencil and paper
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Further Resources
This task is about finding information and making inferences from a poem.
Read the poem "Parcel",  Choices, 1997, to help answer the questions.
 
a)
The poem tells how Holland is different from the place where the speaker in the poem now lives.
Write down five of these differences.
  1.  
     
  2.  
     
  3.  
     
  4.  
     
  5.  
     
b)
Which word best describes how the speaker in this poem is feeling?
(A)   Sad

(B)   Lonely

(C)   Homesick

(D)    Rejected

 
c)
What does the line, "The streets are wide and tarseal sticky", tell you about December weather in New Zealand?
 
 
 
d)
How does the way the poem ends connect with the way the poem begins?
 
 
 
e)
In what way has Holland "become a parcel"?
 
 
 
 
Task administration: 
This task can be completed with pencil and paper.
Copyright: 
Settling In - Text and images were first published by Learning Media Limited for the Ministry of Education. Copyight Bill Nagelkerke, 1997. Illustration Copyright © Crown. Reproduced with permission.
 
Source: Choices, 1997.
Level:
4
Curriculum info: 
English, Making meaning, Reading
Key Competencies: 
Using language, symbols, and texts
Keywords: 
poetry, comprehension, locate information, inference, choices
Description of task: 
Students read a poem, written from the point of view of an immigrant, then answer retrieval and inferential questions.
Curriculum Links: 
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading:
This resource helps to identify students’ ability to
  • infer ideas and information that are not directly stated in the text

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 5
Reading for literary experience, set 5
within the Reading Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Read more about the Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Answers/responses: 
 

Y8 (08/1999)
a) Any 5 of:

  • There are windmills (which aren't spindly).
  • The streets are narrow.
  • The streets are cobbled.
  • The houses are brick.
  • You can see straight inside the houses/the land is flat.
  • The weather/it snows (in December).
  • Gifts are bought at the Kermis.
 4-5 correct – difficult

2-3 correct – easy
b) C easy
c) The weather is hot. easy
d) Repetition of the image of Holland being a parcel wrapped in paper. difficult
e) (The speaker no longer lives in Holland and) his only connection with it are the things that arrive in the parcel at Christmas. moderate