I mentioned last week that we have been working on Author's Purpose with my fourth grade students. This is a subject that I don't think we teach properly the majority of the time. There seems to be way too much focus on PIE (Persuade, Inform, and Entertain), and not enough focus on how the author is thinking. Trust me, I've looked all over TPT, and most of the higher level Author's Purpose is either pretty expensive or geared toward older students (middle/high school).
So as I've been teaching this unit, I've been creating new resources to go along with it. I posted a picture last week of the graphic organizer I created to prove the author's purpose
We practiced this with various short books, and I feel like the kids started to understand it a little more. I also had an "Ask the Author" sheet where students buddy read and then interviewed each other (one pretending to be the author) to get them thinking like an author.
However, I noticed that our standards focus more on author's message. So this week, we are reading selections and talking about why an author might have included particular pages or even paragraphs. Today was the first day I set them off to do some practice on their own, and it didn't go very well. BUT, at least they tried and we can talk about why they are not correct. Many of them wanted to just restate the paragraphs.
I plan on creating more practice sections to add to this packet, but you can get it now for $2! After I finish, the price may go up some more.
I hope it helps your students "Dig Deeper" and start thinking more like authors! We will be working on this in 3rd and 5th in the next few weeks, so I'm hoping to gather as much as I can to help them understand author's purpose on a higher level.
Oh, my newest literacy centers are in the proofreading stage as we speak!
I'm going to do a flash freebie when I post them tomorrow afternoon (Hint: I leave school at 4), so pay close attention! This will be a long overdue celebration of my surpassing 500 followers, and you won't want to miss it!
Melissa, I wrote a post on this very thing yesterday! I ike your resources to really dig into author's purpose. I also created some new things because I had the same thoughts as you - too much focus on identifying the purpose and not nearly enough on why the author included certain elements. It is certainly a big shift in thinking for my kiddos, but I think with a lot of work we'll be able to get there! I just put your product on my wishlist. I'll be trying it out the next time we touch on author's purpose!
ReplyDeleteCourtney
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