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.

Use a checklist to monitor which students master the skill and which need more practice. Students should be able to identify if a text is trying to inform, entertain, or persuade and articulate how they came to that conclusion. Encourage students to look for specific evidence from the text to support their thinking.

Examples:

  • Why do you think the author wrote this book?
  • Do you think the author wrote this book to entertain us, persuade us, or inform us?
  • How did you determine the author's purpose for writing this text? What evidence from the text supports your thinking?
Author's purpose is the author’s primary goal in a piece of writing, such as to narrate, argue, review, explain, examine, entertain, persuade, etc.