Pest Fish
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Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about looking for important information that will help you find the main idea of the text.
Read "Pest Fish", pages 7 to 10 in School Journal Part 2, Number 4, 2005.
Task administration:
This task can be completed with pencil and paper or online (with auto marking).
Equipment:
"Pest Fish". Text and photographs by David Somerset, School Journal Part 2, no.4, Learning Media, 2005.
You will need to provide students with a copy of the text.
- Remind the students that the main idea is what the author wants readers to understand is important and valued in a text.
- Explain to the students that finding the main idea is hard, but that it can be found if they first work out which information is important to the text. Explain that important information will be mentioned more than unimportant information.
- Explain that a) assesses if they understand which information in "Pest fish" is important. Tell the students that first they need to read "Pest fish", then tick theboxes next to each of the six pieces of information they think are important.
- Explain that b) 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 put a tick next to the main idea.
- You may wish to explain the meaning of the term "Background Information" in a).
- The task can be done individually or in groups. Responses can be discussed by the teacher and a student, or within larger groups.
- "Pest Fish" might be read by students, be read to students as a shared text, or be read with students in a guided manner (either as a whole class or in small groups).
Copyright:
"Pest Fish". Text and photographs by David Somerset, School Journal Part 2, no.4, Learning Media, 2005.
Level:
3
Curriculum info:
Key Competencies:
Keywords:
Description of task:
Assessment focus: finding important information and the main idea of an informational text. The text used is about an introduced species of fish which has become a pest. SJ-2-4-2005. Text provided.
Curriculum Links:
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading:
This resource helps to identify students’ ability to:
- use comprehension strategies
- 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 within the Reading Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Read more about the Learning Progressions Frameworks.Answers/responses:
| Y6 (08/2006) | ||
| a) |
The six pieces of important information are listed below:
The future
Expert help
The net
Emptying the pond
Killing the rest
Background information
|
easy
very easy
very easy
very easy
very easy
difficult
6 correct responses: very difficult
5 correct responses: moderate
4 correct responses: very easy
|
| b) | The correct choice is: Rudd are hard to get rid of - it takes experts who know how to drain the water and kill them. | moderate |
Results based on a trial of 196 students
Diagnostic and formative information:
| Common incorrect responses | Likely misconception | |
| a) | Mud (64% of trial students) | Students who made this choice possibly did so because they were overly influenced by prior experience, or because they gave undue importance to something they personally found interesting or entertaining in the text. |
| Massey University (48% of trial students) | Students who made this choice possibly did so because they knew universities to be important institutions and so thought any information about one would be important to the text.They may also have made this choice if they already had some idea of what the main idea might be, but placed undue importance on the link between the expertise required to get rid of the rudd, and the institution the experts came from. | |
| Filling up the pond (43% of trial students) |
Students who made this choice possibly did so because they read, "After a while, the winter rains will fill it with water again", on page 10, and thought the word "fill" was significant because it was explicitly stated.
They may also have made this choice because they confused fire pumps with fire hoses and thought the pond was being filled rather then drained. |
|
| Correct responses not commonly chosen | Likely misconception | |
| Background information (73% of trial students did not consider it important even though most of page 7 gives background information about the rudd.) |
Students may have not considered this to be important because it is not explicitly stated in the text.They may also not have considered it important because they did not understand that the number of details about a particular idea is an indication of importance.
They may also have been confused by the various meanings of "background". While, as is the case in this text, it can refer to the information or circumstances that influence or explain something, it can also refer to things that don’t necessarily need to be attended to, e.g., background noise, or the tasks or processes on a computer that don’t need input from the user. |
|
| Incorrect Responses | Likely misconception | |
| b) | Wrong responses were evenly spread across all options although slightly more chose "Draining the pond is messy and muddy. Dry ice is used to kill the rudd and their eggs" than "Experts use fire pumps to drain the pond so they can catch the rudd" and "Massey University scientists have the knowledge and skills needed to get rid of the rudd". | Students who chose "Experts use fire pumps…" probably did so because they are only able to understand individual details and can not yet group several related details or combine those groups of details from across the text to find the main idea. Students who chose "Massey university scientists…" are probably able to group several related details but can not yet combine those groups. Students who chose "Draining the pond…" probably did so because of the reasons stated above, and also because they do not yet understand that the main idea succinctly combines two or more groups of details into one overarching idea, and is not, as is the case with "Draining the pond…", made up of unrelated statements. |
Next steps:
Students having difficulty finding important information.
In Task a), the majority of students found it very difficult to ascertain that "Background information" was an important feature of the text. This may have been because they expected to see important information explicitly referred to, and did not expect to have to infer it.
- For these students, guide them to locate the background information (on p.7), or model finding it using "think alouds". Encourage discussion around identifying the information given in this part of the text. E.g., How could we make sense of the story without it? In what way does the background information help to explain the lengths gone to eradicate the rudd?
Students may have also rejected "background information" as unimportant if they were unaware of the need to group related details when finding the main idea. They may have also been unaware that several details could be grouped under the Background Information heading.
- If students are having difficulty grouping related details, support them to find the details relating to important information, such as "the future" (p.10, paragraph 2) and/or present a group of details about "the future", e.g., "winter rain will fill up the pond", "native fish might return", "the water will be clear and water plants will grow for ducks to eat", "eels and cockabullies will live in the pond", and "there will be no pest fish ever again".
- Encourage discussion around how the details are related and what a name for the grouped details might be.
Students having difficulty differentiating between important and unimportant information
If students have identified relatively unimportant information in a) as important, it may be necessary for them to go through the text to find the details that relate to each piece of information. Subsequently, they will see that the relatively unimportant information gets little mention in the text, and will therefore have evidence supporting its rejection as unimportant.
Other resources
Duffy, G. (2003). Explaining reading: A resource for teaching concepts, skills, and strategies. NewYork, NY: The Guilford Press.
Ministry of Education. (2006). Effective literacy practice in years 5 to 8. Wellington: Learning Media.
Click here for a selection of ARB resources that focus on main idea
Click here for a selection of ARB resources that focus on inference