:Dictionary Find
Trend Task
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Approach:Station Level: Year 8
Focus: Use of a dictionary.        
Resources:The New Zealand Oxford Primary School Dictionary.
624KB

Questions/instructions

Use the dictionary to answer all of the questions.

Write down the number of the page on which you found the answer.
% responses
2000 ('97)
y8
1. Mere’s grandfather is a kaumatua.

What is a kaumatua?
Answer:
Elderly man/Mäori elder
91 (95)
Page number:
238 or *239
86 (96)
2. Jo was being obtuse.

What does this mean?
Answer:
slow to understand, stupid
86 (89)
Page number:
298 or *299
96 (97)
3. In the line below is “load” a noun, a verb or an adjective?

It is time to load the truck.
Answer:
verb
 
46 (50)
4. The spelling is not right for the word that is underlined.
What is the right spelling?

You can see many colours in the kilidiscope.
Answer:
kaleidoscope
39 (39)

Page number:
238 or *239
42 (40)
(* different editions)

kaumätua
noun (kaumätua)
(say koh-mah-too-a)
an elderly man or woman

obtuse
adjective (obtuser, obtusest)
slow to understand; stupid.
obtuse angle, an angle between 90 and 180 degrees.

 

load
noun (loads)
1 something to be carried.
2 the quantity that can be carried. 3 (informal) a large amount, It's a load of nonsense.
load
verb (loads, loading, loaded)
1 to put a load on something.
2 to put a weight into a thing, loaded dice. 3 to give someone large amounts of something, they loaded him with gifts. 4 to put a bullet or shell into a gun. 5 to put a film into a camera.

 kaleidoscope
noun (kaleidoscopes)
(say käl-is-dös-kohp)
a tube that you look through to see brightly-coloured patterns which change as you turn the end of the tube.
kaleidoscopic adjective.a
Commentary:
Students were highly successful with questions 1 and 2, but struggled much more with question 3 which required interpretation of the information and question 4 which required a good guess as to the correct spelling. The lower percentage in 2001 for the page number in question 1 arose because the station for this task also had a Mäori dictionary for another task and some students used that instead of the intended dictionary. Student performance was very similar in 1997 and 2001.
 
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