28 chapter 5 finding and using information from books

28 CHAPTER 5FINDING AND USING INFORMATION FROM BOOKS

The assessments included eight tasks which asked the students to find anduse particular information in reference books (children’s encyclopedia,dictionaries, a specialised reference book, a telephone book, and a 110 pagecity visitors guide).

One task was identical for both year 4 and year 8. The other tasks wereattempted only by year 4 or year 8 students. Four tasks, including the taskgiven to both year levels, have been selected as link tasks (to be used again inthe year 2001) and therefore are not described in detail here. The other tasksare released tasks for which full details are given.

The chapter presents the assessment tasks in the following order:

➢ the released tasks attempted by either year 4 and year 8 students;

➢ the link task attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students;

➢ the link tasks attempted by either year 4 or year 8 students.

Both year 4 and year 8 students achieved substantial success in these tasks.On the task components common to both year levels, about 30 percent moreyear 8 students than year 4 students achieved success. Students had leastsuccess with task components which required some ingenuity, flexibility orpersistence to find appropriate search keywords. In most cases, they alsoperformed distinctly less well when asked to interpret or summariseinformation than when asked just to locate the information.

% responsesy4 y8

Chapter 5: Finding and using information from books 29

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Questions/instructions

Children’s Book of Knowledge

Station Year 4

Oxford Children’s Pocket Book of Knowledge (1992)


Use the Oxford Children’s Book ofKnowledge to find your answers.

1. Penguins

How long can Emperor pen-guins stay under the water?

Answer: minutes

2. Foxes

How fast can a fox run?

Answer: km/h

3. Lions live in groups called

4. One of these teeth is a molar.Draw a ring around the molar.

5. When was Sir Winston Churchill born?

9� 50

48� 59

Prides� 66

� 56

1874� 24

Number correct: 5 13

4 19

3 22

2 15

1 17

0 14

Commentary

About one third of the year 4 students got 4 or 5questions right, while 14 percent got none right.Students could ask for help with reading, but lim-ited reading skills make the use of such a refer-ence book very difficult even if someone isavailable to read selected passages.

% responsesy4 y8

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30 NEMP Report 7: Information Skills 1997

You have 9 minutes for this task — start thetimer now.

A new set of cards is being made for a breakfastcereal. There are 5 cards with people’s namesand pictures on them. On each card write downtwo things:

1. The year the person was born.

2. Something for which the person is famous.

Use the Oxford Children’s Pocket Book of

Knowledge to help you.

Famous People

Station Year 8

Oxford Children’s Pocket Book of Knowledge (1992); timer — set by teacher to 9 minutes.

Ghandi: year 80fame 64

Pasteur: year 80fame 46

Magellan: year 80fame 70

Commentary

Year 8 students had high levels of success in find-ing the year of birth. For some of the people lookedup, they were less successful in distinguishing thesource of their fame from less important details(eg. Ghandi was a lawyer).

Curie: year 71fame 69

Galileo: year 72fame 58

Mohandas GhandiYear of birth:Ghandi is famous for:

Louis PasteurYear of birth:Pasteur is famous for:

Ferdinand MagellanYear of birth:Magellan is famous for:

Marie CurieYear of birth:Curie is famous for:

Galileo GalileiYear of birth:Galileo is famous for:

% responsesy4 y8


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Auckland Visit

Station Year 8

Auckland Visitors Guide 1997


A family is going to visit Auckland. Theyhaven’t been there before. They wantyou to find some information for them.You will need to use the Auckland

Visitors’ Guide.

1. They want to go to the Auckland CityArt Gallery. What time of the day doesit open?

2. They would like to take their dog for awalk at Eden Garden. What numberwould they ring to find out if dogs areallowed?

3. Their 10 year old child wants to goeither ice skating or to the zoo.Which would be cheaper?How much cheaper?

4. They want to catch a bus from the air-port to the city. How much will it costfor a single ticket?

10am 84

(09) 638-8395 69

zoo 80$2.00 69

$10.00 39

Number correct:5 26

4 30

3 20

2 12

1 7

0 5

Commentary

The year 8 students were generally successful withthis task except for part 4. The required informationwas not clearly indexed in the table of contents: itcould be found by looking under the heading“Airlines”, under “Bus/coach tours and services”(listed under “Johnston’s”) but not under “Airportinformation”.

% responsesy4 y8

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32 NEMP Report 7: Information Skills 1997

Phone Book Search

One to one Year 8

West Coast and Buller 1996/97 phone book; cue card showing text: “House of Travel Hokitika”.


Here is a phone book for three areas in the West Coast. Theyare Greymouth, Hokitika and Westport.

Different kinds of information are found in different parts ofthe book — the covers, blue pages, white pages and yellowpages.

Without looking through the book, I want you to tell mewhich would be the best part of the book to quickly find dif-ferent kinds of information. Where would you look for:

1. the emergency number for the police, fire service andambulances?

2. phone numbers for toy shops?

3. phone number of a friend who lives in Greymouth?

Now I would like you to look for somephone numbers for me.

Give the student the phone book and the cue card.4. I want you to find the main phone number in the white

pages for the House of Travel Hokitika and tell me thenumber.

5. Now I want you to use the yellow pages to look for theHouse of Travel Hokitika. If you find it, show me.

6. If you really need a phone number but can’t find it in thebook, what could you do?

Prompts:

Tell me why/how you would do that?

Can you think of another way to find out the

number?

Inside cover 59

Yellow Pages 76

White pages 79

Commentary

The year 8 students had substantial suc-cess with this task. It is worth notingthat the location of the emergencynumbers was not known by 41 percentof the students.

775–8134 77

found 70

good ideas 50

vague ideas 40

other 10

Link tasks

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LINK TASK 6

Station

Year 4 and year 8

Reference book

Students were asked to look up twospecific items of information about eachof three objects, and record their findingson a chart.

Information item 1 64 92

2 41 73

3 70 90

4 50 90

5 69 91

6 35 73

CommentaryYear 8 students were substantially more successful thanyear 4 students. 59% of year 8 students recorded all 6items correctly, compared with 24% of year 4 students.

LINK TASK 7

Station

Year 4

NZ Oxford Junior Dictionary

Students were asked to look upinformation about three words (onemisspelt) recording the information andpage number where it was found.

Word 1 information 81page number 85



Commentary

For words 2 and 3, students had greater successfinding the correct page than recording the correctinformation.

LINK TASK 8

Station

Year 8

NZ Oxford Primary School Dictionary

Students were asked to look upinformation about four words (onemisspelt), recording the information andpage number where it was found.



Word 3 information 50


CommentaryStudents had difficulty with word 3 (involving partsof speech) and word 4 (misspelt). The first 2 wordswere very well handled.

LINK TASK 9

One to one

Year 8

Reference book

Students were asked to explainsomething about the reference book,then to try to look up two topics.

Explanation appropriate 69

Topic 1 found 91

Topic 2 found 46

Commentary

The second topic was difficult to find because thekeywords used did not match the most commonusage.


28 chapter 5 finding and using information from books

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