Author's Purpose Part Two

I think a tell tale sign of loving a certain concept is when you dedicate two blog posts to it. I'm here today to bring you another post on Author's Purpose. You can check out my first post here on using Scholastic flyers to teach it, which according to Pinterest, is in the popular crowd..ha! I can say that because it's one of the few pins I have that's in that crowd and I'm the proud mama bragging. 

I think Author's Purpose needs several strategies and activities to really drive the point home in younger kids. A while back, I wanted to think of another engaging way to try to get the kiddos to remember what the definitions were of Persuade, Inform, and Entertain. I'll get to the P.I.E. method soon, but I also came up with these posters. I introduced cute little characters to hook them in and help them remember what each word means. You can grab these posters for free below. 

You can also show various videos from Youtube. Here is one that you can use to just brush up on how you can explain the concept to the kids, OR you can use this at some point before or during the lesson. 

              

Now, let's get back to P.I.E. Once the kids remember what each letter stands for, we practice using this method. By now, they should be familiar with what each letter stands for and for a fun craft assessment, we create this PIE project. So far, we are scaffolding the learning because I'm not having then write out the definitions yet. I'm just having them glue the correct one for each word.

To apply their learning, we fill in this flip flap organizer. NOW, they have to write the word that each letter is associated with AND give the definition inside the flap.

As a final wrap up, I like to use a real book to enhance their learning. Here, you can either let them choose their own book to read, assign a group a book and have them work together, or just use a mentor text that you read out loud to the class. After reading the book, students have to write the title  of the book on the pie slice. On the writing portion, they write the purpose. But then they also have to tell me why they think that and give at least one concrete example from the book that helped them make their decision. 

These activities, coupled with the Scholastic activities, help kid reinforce a sometimes difficult concept. 

You can take a look at the rest of the activities mentioned  below.