Author's Purpose

Our Reading Street Unit 1 test is coming up next week.  I was looking for something that would spice up our day and be valuable to the students learning - the 2 most important aspects of teaching!

I decided to stick with the typical "P.I.E.E." to teach about persuading, informing, entertaining, AND expressing emotion (you can't forget that extra E!).

Whenever I incorporate an activity... I mean CRAFTIVITY.. into the classroom, my goal is to make it purposeful.  I ask myself, "Is this craftivity going to take longer to teach or to make?"  If the crafting takes longer, I feel like it is not beneficial to the education of the kids - no matter how cute it is!  HOWEVER, I have found a lot of tricks to making a cute craft meaningful, you just have to sneak in the teachable moments whenever possible.

PIEE Author's Purpose document - click here!

Each student was given the pie outline and the cover sheet.  In the center of the "frosting," we defined what Author's Purpose was - "Author's Purpose is the reason an author writes a text."  Instead of just giving them the definition, I challenged them to think of it on their own (which many students already knew, whew!).  If there was a struggle, my Plan B was to have them research it on their Chromebooks.

We made a list of our "key words" when it comes to author's purpose.

We went through the activity step-by-step.  Each student had to write a couple sentences persuading me to do something.  To inspire them, we watched this YouTube video and it brought back MANY memories from my childhood! :)  They listened for the key words in each clip.

Persuasive Commerials

We have been studying hurricanes in science for the last 2 weeks.  So, to tie in our science curriculum with our "inform" column, we wrote informational facts about hurricanes.  The students used a search engine called KidRex.  They found a great article on Weather Wiz Kids that listed amazing hurricane facts.

Entertain was one of my favorites to read as I walked around the room.  I definitely have a classroom full of unique individuals!

To express emotions was slightly challenging for some students.  I now know my goal for them is to dig deeper into their writing and pump up their sentences with descriptive words.

Word Hunt and Writing Activities

Sight Word Hunt

Students wore sight words on their foreheads and had to roam the classroom to located each sight word on the list.  Before they could connect the student name with the sight word, they had to read the sight word out loud to each other.

Such a great activity to build listening and speaking skills along with confidence in their sight words.

Class color day and the student on the right got into the spirit with his face paint!  To create the worksheet, I made 2 columns on Microsoft Word and on one side typed the students in my class and on the other typed relevant sight words. Super simple and very fun!

Sticker Writing:

Each student was given 1 sticker to stick on their paper.  Then, they had to come up with a creative picture that incorporated their sticker.

Students had to write a list of nouns and verbs from their creative picture.  Finally, they created sentences using the sentence frame to match their picture.  A rubric was included on the worksheet to give them accountability for their writing.

Writing Worksheet freebie!

Sentence Puzzles:

Each student wrote a sentence using Noun + verb + finisher.

Then, they cut each piece of their sentence apart.

(it was pajama day!)

Once the sentences were cut, we bagged them, and mixed them up.  The students read through a friends sentence and had to create a complete sentence.

A Bad Case of Stripes

A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon has quickly become my student's favorite book this year. We have read it a number of times over the last few months, so I decided to incorporate a writing activity and craft as a fun way to wrap up the year.

Storyline Online is a very popular website created by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. This website features well-known actors reading stories aloud using animations and accents.  It is a great supplement to reading stories aloud to the class and gives the students a great example of what an excelling reader should look and sound like.

My class watched A Bad Case of Stripes read by Sean Astin.  They loved to hear him change voices, use a pretend telephone, and show pictures that matched our classroom book.

We used our knowledge of story elements to create a writing and craft activity about Camilla Cream.

Some students were inventive and made Camilla with camoflauge stripes, while others stayed true to the storyline.

 

Camilla Cream freebie (coming soon)