[gerberdaisy]

Author's purpose is one of my upcoming mini-lessons and I'm looking for an interesting way to present it. We will have only been in school for four days at this point so my students won't be in their guided reading groups yet. The only thing I've thought of is a whole class discussion and I'm afraid it wouldn't last for the whole lesson. Any information will be helpful!

[kristen_teach]

Brainstorm a list of reasons an author may write a book.

Explain that there are three main reasons: PIE can help us remember them (persuade, inform, entertain). Describe what each of these terms mean and share an example of a book/ part of a book that would fall under each.

Look back at the brainstorm list and see if you can fit their ideas under the PIE ideas.

Have students look in the classroom library/ school library for an example of each type.

Have students share examples.

I'm surprised this is your minilesson for the 4th day of school.

[Mariely]

I usually teach author's purpose using a handout I have posted on my site. It goes into determining the author's intent first. The students determine whether the passage was a story/poem or an article. According to the type of passage the students will have different author's intents to choose from.

Then the students determine the main idea. They follow the formula of:

Author's Intent + Main Idea = Author's Purpose

Here's the link to the handout I have on my site: http://www.sanchezclass.com/docs/aut...nt-purpose.pdf

Hope this was helpful for you. Have a wonderful day!

I have been searching the everywhere for something to add to my Author's Purpose lesson that I will be evalutated on TOMORROW 1-7-09 and YOURS was just the ticket thank you for sharing!! I wish more of us teachers put our ideas out there for others to 'steal' and tweek and make our own - because, anyway that we can get our students to learn more effectively is WOnderful and if we are all in this profession to do just that, we shouldn't honored to have someone like something that we did, so well, that they ask to use it. THANK YOU~!!!

[mendoza08]

How did yours go? If you have any other ideas that worked please share. I am doing the donut idea too. What are good books to show as an example of pursuade? Thanks !

[Beansac McGee]

I teach 3rd grade and use a fun little way to teach/intro Author's Purpose. We have a tv in our classroom. So, I flip it on and have a list of channels already written down on a piece of paper. After we've discussed the meaning of the main trypes of writing, I tunr to those channels and they must respond with the correct answer. For example, if I turn the tv to CNN, they will say "Inform." If I turn to NICKELODEON, they'll say to "Entertain." We have the TV on, but they hardly realize that we're using it as a learning tool! Worked well for 3 years now!
Hope this helps!

Just curious. What is the donut idea??