English Language Arts and Reading.2.10.E

The student is expected to

identify the use of first or third person in a text; and

author's purpose strand teks talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances.

Observe student responses during class discussions and use a checklist to determine who has mastered this SE and who needs more review. Students must be able to identify whether a text is written in first or third person. Ask students to listen to or read a story and determine if it is written in first or third person. Once students state their answers, ask them to explain why.

Example:

The text is written in first person because it uses the words I, we, and us or the text is written in third person because it uses the following nouns or pronouns: the boy, he, she, it, they, the girl, the kids, the dog.

First person is a narrative perspective restricted to that of the author/narrator’s thoughts and feelings as the central character and point of view in the story. First person uses first-person pronouns such as I, me, my, and us.
Third person is a narrative perspective that includes the thoughts and feelings of one (third-person limited) or more of the characters/people (third-person omniscient) in a story or text and uses the third-person pronouns he, she, and they.