Teaching Author's Purpose...what resources do you use?

The learning target for this week-"I can identify an author's purpose and target audience for a text."

I was inspired after some "Pinteresting."  A blog I follow is Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher.

She is a superstar teacher with some refreshing strategies that I have been able to utilize in my classroom this year.  A favorite of mine is her Interactive Notebooks, which I have incorporated into my students' learning this year to really emphasize the various concepts my students are responsible for learning.

I began these binder/notebooks with my students on the very first day of school.  The Reader's Notebook section is filling up with each week's learning target.  This week our focus was on author's purpose.  My students quickly grasped the PIES acronym for persuade, inform, entertain, and share as they completed their interactive notebook page and filled it in with the information we developed as a whole class. 

Students cut, fold, and glue the page to a piece of loose-leaf paper.  The notes get documented in their
Reader's Notebook.  We fill in all of the necessary information on the back of and under the various flaps as a
whole group.  We refer to the notes all week and whenever needed in the future.  I feel this strategy is more memorable than simply recording notes on notebook paper-it gives a visual to remember the concept.

Reader's Notebook Table of Contents

A snapshot of our anchor chart and additional notes needed to grasp the concept.  

The interactive notebook flap can be seen at the bottom of the anchor chart.

Derrick answering reader response questions focusing on author's purpose.

 



Working on author's purpose through Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith



I utilize my Interactive Notebooks with all three of my reading classes.  While the other two classes are reading Hunger Games and applying their learning at a different level, all of my students no matter their current reading level, are able to benefit from and utilize this effective organizational note-taking system.  Each of my different groups were able to grasp a concept at different levels, but through the use of one effective learning tool.  I am glad I found this idea and will continue to implement it with my students for years to come.

Here are a few other resources I utilized this week for author's purpose...

• https://jeopardylabs.com/play/authors-purpose6   A jeopardy game reviewing the concept for all three classes...I utilized this for two purposes for my two higher groups...1) Once in teams, the student that had chosen the question had to read it aloud to the entire class to work on fluency, 2) students had the opportunity to challenge their learning for the week in a friendly interactive review game format.

FYI-there are two slides with typos so check them over and fix them before sharing them with your group.  One misspells the word entertain.  The other uses the word "humped" instead of "jumped."  If you want to give your students a good laugh-let them find the errors. I wasn't so daring!!!

•  http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/free-reading-worksheets/authors-purpose-worksheets/A few different resources I utilized for morning work to check my students' understanding of the learning target.  I like that the RTF allows you to modify them to meet the needs of your students.

I am working on grading this week's assessments of our learning target, but I am pleased with the progress my students made as readers and the work they put forth.  After our data charting...onto inferential questions next week...wish me luck!