TEKS Talk - SLA Authors Purpose 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.

Take students on a text features walk through a text that students have previously read. Begin by pointing out features such as the title, illustrations, photos, headings, or subtitles. For each feature, ask students to consider the purpose and how it supports the reader’s comprehension of the text. Then, working in pairs, task students with analyzing examples of print and graphic features in another familiar text.
 

Further Explanation

For this SE the student is expected to examine in detail how an author purposely uses print and graphic features to enhance the reader’s understanding of the text by supplementing the information in the main body of the text.

Students are expected to examine in detail how an author purposely uses print features, such as references or acknowledgements, as well graphic features, such as photographs, to enhance the reader’s understanding of the text. For example, a captioned image can help a reader by illustrating a difficult concept or by supplementing the information in the main body of the text.
a picture, visual aid, or other image within a text used to support the author’s purpose and message
the use of words to explain something in the text (e.g., titles, bold print, captions)

Research

1. Jennings, K. A., Rule, A. C., & Vander Zanden, S. M. (2014). Fifth graders' enjoyment, interest, and comprehension of graphic novels compared to heavily-illustrated and traditional novels. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 6(2), 257–274. Accessed online at https://eric.ed.gov/?q=graphic+novels&ft=on&id=EJ1053749

Summary: Researchers explore the effectiveness of graphic novels as a way to address student interests and include visual media in the curriculum. Graphic novels were defined as one way to successfully bring multimodal texts in the classroom. The study concludes that reading graphic novels increased student discussion and story comprehension. The heavily illustrated novel scored higher in the study assessment than the traditional novel.

2. Monnin, K. (2010). Teaching Media Literacy with Graphic Novels. New Horizons in Education. 58(3), 78–84. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=author%27s+use+of+print+and+graphic+features+to+serve+purpose&pr=on&ft=on&id=EJ966661

Summary: This article reviews current media literacy research and its emphasis on defining media literacy texts as texts that rely on both print literacies and image literacies. The conclusions is that novels rely on both print literacies and image literacies, so they qualify as media literacy texts and can be taught as such in K–12 classrooms.