Author's Purpose

I have enjoyed this short week and am excited that tomorrow is already Thursday and even more excited for this weekend! I am VERY fortunate that my school is allowing a few of us to go to Chicago to see The Sisters! If you haven't heard of The Sisters they are the creators of the Daily Five and CAFE. Both of which we use at my school. Although it seems intimidating at first, it has been amazing and you could walk through any of our classes during the Daily Five and see 18 students fully engaged while the teacher is working with a small group on a specific reading strategy. 

This week we have been spending our mini-lessons during Daily Five learning about author's purpose. We began by having a discussion about why authors write books. My second graders came up with some adorable ideas! My favorite being to give us something to do so we aren't bored! Then we used Primay Polka Dots Some Bunny Please Tell Me pack that covers author's purpose and point of view.

In this pack there are different task cards and the kids read through them and decided if the author's purpose was persuade, inform, or entertain. It took them awhile to get the hang of it but they started to see a pattern after we did a few! I wish I had taken a picture of them working on this but I forgot! It's taken me a little while to get used to carrying my phone around to take pictures. My kiddos on the other hand are LOVING it! 

Another activity we did today was from Jen at The Teacher's Cauldron. I wish I could have recorded the discussion they were having with their partners during this.

Tomorrow we will be doing one of Christina Bainbridge's Classroom Hunts. I am hoping at this point they will be able to independently decide what the author's purpose is! 

One last thing, the unit we have been working on in math includes measurement. On Tuesday we created our Gallon People. Last year I created my own to use.

However, the fabulous Amy Lemons has created a capacity mini-unit that I totally forgot I even had. If you are interested in making gallon people with your students I would suggest this! It really helped visualize such an abstract idea! 

That's all I have for now! If you have any fun ideas on teaching author's purpose I would love to hear about them!