Teaching author’s purpose can be one of the most engaging and entertaining skills that you teach! If you do some great activities for author’s purpose, your students will be engaged the entire time and successful at figuring out what the purpose is that the author is trying to write! In this post, I am going to share my top 4 author’s purpose activities with you! These activities to teach author’s purpose are great warm-up activities or simple introduction activities to the skill!
SKITS!
- Give students a topic like “persuade your parents into buying you a skateboard” or “entertain by showing a scene about a monkey”.
- Give students 10 minutes or less to create a scene.
- Let the groups act out the scenes in front of the class while the class determines the purpose behind it!
Switch the Story!
- Read a great picture book! One I would recommend is “Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?” by Tanya Lee. (Affiliate link when you click on it!)
- Then, as a class, determine the purpose behind writing that story.
- Now let the kids switch the purpose and write a new story of their own to practice a new author’s purpose!
The PIE activity for author’s purpose!
If you have been teaching author’s purpose for any time at all, then you have heard the acronym PIE or PIE’ED! Both are great ways to get your kiddos to remember what the different purposes are!
Here are two extra examples of how you can use the idea behind PIE to practice the purpose!
- Get a Pie in the Face game! Give students task cards to complete to practice author’s purpose. Then, when they are done they can do one round with the game Pie in the Face! (pro tip: ask a parent if they have a game that you can use for the day)
- PIE Tins- Grab a bunch of pie tins and have students use newspapers to sort articles based on their purpose!
Take Students to the Library!
In this activity for author’s purpose you either want to take your kiddos to the library or use your classroom library. Students will read the back cover of the book and try to determine the purpose of the book using only those details. This will help students master the skill of looking for certain words and simple things to determine what the purpose is!
Want to know exactly how to teach author’s purpose, what to teach, and have all the materials prepped and ready for you?
Grab the entire week’s lesson plan (small group and whole group) here!
Hannah Wilde
I am so glad you’re here! I love helping 3rd-5th grade teachers by providing ideas, engaging resources, and professional development they need. I am a literacy coach who is here to help lessen the workload for teachers while making them more confident! I want students to be continually engaged in a rigorous environment!