Saying goodbye

Saying goodbye

Pencil and paper
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about identifying important information to help you get the main idea of a text.

Read "Saying Goodbye", pages 2 to 8 of School Journal Part 3, Number 3, 2006.

a) Tick  three of the boxes below to show which information is most important to this text.

  Poppa not wanting Nonna to have to go into a rest home
  When Poppa talks about the men who died at sea and how he never got to say goodbye to them
  Carlo giving his Poppa a big hug before he leaves him
  Carlo describing the photo of Poppa as a younger man
  When Carlo realises that the gathering at the beach is a very important time for his grandfather
  Poppa giving some vegetables he grew to Carlo to take home to his mother

 

b) Now you've chosen the three most important pieces of information, write them in the order they appear in the text.

First:

 
 
 

Second

 
 
 

Third

 
 
 

c) Tick  the box next to the main idea of this text.

  The past always seems better than the present.
  Old people can still help you out. People should be grateful for their heritage.
  Relationships are important – without them you will be lonely.
  Old people can teach us a lot about life – about love, friendship, and loss.
Task administration: 

This task can be completed with pencil and paper.

Equipment: Saying Goodbye. In School Journal Part 3, Number 3, Learning Media Limited, 2006. 

  1. Remind students that the main idea is what the author wants readers to understand is important and valued in the text as a whole.
  2. Explain to 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.
  3. Explain that a) assesses if they understand which information is important. Tell the students that first they need to read the story "Saying Goodbye", pages 2 to 8, then tick the boxes next to each of the three pieces of information they think are most important.
  4. Explain 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.
  5. Explain 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 they identified in a), then put a tick next to the main idea.
  6. The task can be done individually or in groups.
  7. Responses can be discussed by teacher and student only, or within a larger group. Group discussion has the advantage of giving students opportunities to consider others' ideas and to practise justifying their own.
Level:
4
Curriculum info: 
English, Making meaning, Reading
Key Competencies: 
Thinking
Keywords: 
comprehension, main idea, narrative, School Journal, evaluating, think critically, SJ-3-3-2006
Description of task: 
This comprehension task assesses student ability to identify important information to establish the main idea of a narrative text about acknowledging older people. SJ-3-3-2006. Text provided.
Curriculum Links: 
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading:
This resource helps to identify students’ ability to:
  • use comprehension strategies
  • evaluate and integrate ideas and information
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 (04/2007)
a) Student identifies the three most important pieces of information:

  • When Poppa talks about the men who died at sea and how he never got to say goodbye to them
  • Carlo giving his Poppa a big hug before he leaves him
  • When Carlo realises that the ceremony at the beach is a very important time for his grandfather

Student identifies all three of the above pieces of important information:

Very easy
Difficult
Very easy
 
 
Difficult
b) Student correctly orders the three important pieces of information:

  • First: When Carlo realises that the ceremony at the beach is a very important time for his grandfather
  • Second: When Poppa talks about the men who died at sea and how he never got to say goodbye to them
  • Third: Carlo giving his Poppa a big hug before he leaves him
 Very difficult
c) Student identifies the main idea of the article:

  • Old people can teach us a lot about life – about love, friendship, and loss.
 Easy
Diagnostic and formative information: 
a) Distinguishing between important and relatively unimportant information
The majority of trial students correctly identified the second and fifth pieces of information as important: 96% identified 'When Poppa talks about the men who died at sea and how he never got to say goodbye to them', and 90% identified 'When Carlo realises that the ceremony at the beach is a very important time for his grandfather'.
The third piece, 'Carlo giving his Poppa a big hug before he leaves him', was correctly identified as important information by only 30%. It is about Carlo's love and respect for his Poppa which is mentioned often in the text, so is important. Details in the text about this can be found on:
Page 7: Carlo sits next to his Poppa as if to comfort him; Carlo keeps quiet (doesn't sigh) when Poppa begins to tell him what happened.
Page 8: Carlo does not sigh when Poppa again asks him questions that begin "Have I ever told you...?"/"Did I ever tell you...?"; Carlo saying they walk slowly home and noticing that his Poppa 'leans heavily on his stick', acknowledging his Poppa's sadness; his positive response to his Poppa in the last sentence shown in the written and visual texts, which includes a 'big hug'.
Overall, 23% correctly identified all of three important pieces of information, while 70% correctly identified two out of the three.
42% of students incorrectly identified 'Carlo describing the photo of Poppa as a younger man' as important. These students did not understand that this information is relatively unimportant as it is mentioned only once.

b) Sequencing the important information identified in a) to match the text

This task is designed to check if students guessed at a). Of the 23% of trial students who correctly identified all three pieces of important information at a), not all of them then went on to correctly sequence this information at b). This suggests that they may have guessed when responding at a), although it is possible that they were not successful at b) simply because they did not reread the text to check the sequence.

This task requires students to separate out the important information from other information at a). The process of coming to the main idea at c) by combining the important information is therefore made more obvious for students.

c) Finding the main idea
62% of trial students correctly identified the main idea. 55% of these students had identified at least two of the important pieces of information correctly at task a) and so had evidence on which to base their choice of main idea.
27% of students chose 'Relationships are important – without them you will be lonely'. While this text is about relationships, it is not about loneliness.
Although most 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.