Skaters – are they really to blame?

Skaters – are they really to blame?

Pencil and paperOnline interactive
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Further Resources
This task is about making inferences to identify the main idea in different points of view.
Read the four posts from an online forum and answer the questions that follow.
skaties-letters

Question

 
a) Select the person who explains what skaties want.

    • C. P. Griffiths

    • Hemi Waerea

    • Huey Kaine

    • Tina Moriarty

Question 1Change answer

b)  For each of the posts, select the main idea for their post.
C. P. Griffiths
Adults need to be fairer to the kids.Skaties are a menace.Skaties want somewhere to ride their boards.Skaties should take no notice of adults or the rules.
 
Hemi Waerea
Adults need to be fairer to the kids.Skaties are a menace.Skaties want somewhere to ride their boards.Skaties should take no notice of adults or the rules.
 
Huey Kaine
Adults need to be fairer to the kids.Skaties are a menace.Skaties want somewhere to ride their boards.Skaties should take no notice of adults or the rules.
 
Tina Moriarty
Adults need to be fairer to the kids.Skaties are a menace.Skaties want somewhere to ride their boards.Skaties should take no notice of adults or the rules.

Question

c)  Imagine you have to give a talk to your class about the four posts from the online forum.
     Select the best title for your talk.

    • Why skateboards should be banned.

    • Rules should be broken.

    • Different views of the skateboarding debate.

    • Adults are unfair to skateboarders.

Question

I suppose my son is a skatie. He is not a criminal. He is just an ordinary kid who wants to have some fun riding his board. In this town he and his friends have been banned from riding their boards from just about everywhere. These are good kids who just want an area that they can skate in and be left to have fun in their own way – let's give them a fair go!

Fair-minded
 
d)  The letter above was written to the local newspaper by a parent of one of the online posts. 
     It is most likely to be the parent of ... (Select the name)

    • C. P. Griffiths

    • Hemi Waerea

    • Huey Kaine

    • Tina Moriarty

Question Change answer

     ii)  Highlight the words in the letter above by 'Fair-minded' to support your answer for d) i).
I suppose my son is a skatie. He is not a criminal.
He is just an ordinary kid who wants to have some fun riding his board.
In this town he and his friends have been banned from riding their boards from just about everywhere.
These are good kids who just want an area that they can skate in and be left to have fun in their own way – let's give them a fair go!
Task administration: 
This task can be completed with pencil and paper or online (with some auto-marking).
Copyright: 

Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. Originally taken by Ernie, Flickr, from Beijing, China. Used with permission.

Level:
3
Curriculum info: 
English, Making meaning, Reading
Key Competencies: 
Thinking, Using language, symbols, and texts
Keywords: 
inference, comprehension, main idea, persuasion, point of view, personal viewpoint
Description of task: 
Students read the letters written by four different people and identify the main idea of each letter.
Curriculum Links: 
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions for Reading:
This resource helps to identify students’ ability to:

  • use comprehension strategies
  • infer ideas and information that are not directly stated

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

Answers/responses: 
 

Y7 (03/2003)
a) Hemi Waerea moderate
b) A – 2 (Skaters are a menace)
B – 3 (Skaters want somewhere to ride their boards)
C – 4 (Skaters should take no notice of adults or the rules)
D – 1 (Adults need to be fairer to the kids)		 For all correct - difficult
c) C (Different views of the skateboarding debate) easy
d) i) Hemi Waerea
ii) "These are good kids who just want an area that they can skate in" - Fair-minded		 very difficult
very difficult