English Language Arts and Reading.6.9.A

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The student is expected to

explain the author's purpose and message within a text;

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.

Ask students to work in small groups to read the same text and explain what they believe to be the author’s purpose and message in the text. Require students to provide text evidence to support their responses. Allow for dialogue in which students ask each other questions and refine their perspectives based on the group discussion. By the end of the discussion, the group should come to a consensus response.
 

Further Explanation

In this assessment, students should be able to justify their understanding of the main point or idea being conveyed in a text. Once students understand the message of the text, they should be able to analyze how the author’s purpose has a specific effect on the reader such as to entertain, convince a reader to believe an idea, share an experience, or provide information.

Author's purpose refers to an author's main goal in a piece of writing. Students are expected to explain that the author's purpose is reflected in the way the author writes about a topic. For example, if the author’s aim is to amuse, the author will probably use jokes or anecdotes. If the author’s goal is to inform or teach, it is likely that the author will include facts, descriptions, and reasonable explanations.
The message of a text refers to the fundamental or basic idea explored or expressed by an author in a text. Sometimes the message is explicit and straightforward; but in other cases, the message is embedded in the text and may require that students infer it. Students are expected to use evidence to justify their understanding of the main point or idea being conveyed to the reader.

Research

Barth, A. E., & Elleman, A. (2017). Evaluating the impact of a multistrategy inference intervention for middle-grade struggling readers. Language, Speech, & Hearing Services in Schools, 48(1), 31+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490475287/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=85a8099a

Summary: This study examines the effectiveness of multiple inference intervention strategies that were designed to increase inference-making and reading comprehension for struggling readers. The study focused on using text clues, activating and integrating prior knowledge, understanding character and author's purpose, and responding to inference questions. Details and lesson examples are available in the Appendix.