English Language Arts and Reading.7.9.A

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

Further Explanation

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, to convince a reader to believe an idea, to share an experience, or to 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. On the contrary, if the author’s goal is to inform or teach, 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 writing piece. Sometimes the message may be explicit and straightforward, but in other cases the message could be 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

Maine, F. (2013). How children talk together to make meaning from texts: A dialogic perspective on reading comprehension strategies. Literacy, 47(3), 150–156. doi:10.1111/lit.12010

Summary: Multiple studies have revealed that reading comprehension increases when reading examples includes text and images. Visual and multimodal are proven strategies. This study expands the literature related to reading comprehension by examining student talk and the ways in which students engage inter-mental and intra-mental reading processes. The findings reveal that student talk allows students to question the reading and draw multiple interpretations of the meaning. Students are both creative and open to hypothetical scenarios. The article includes a discussion on the benefits of using this strategy such as student engagement, creative dialogue, and innovation.