Author's Purpose Pie 2

1. Begin the lesson by providing students with page 2 of the Author's Purpose Sort (linked in resources). Instruct students to cut out the boxes and sort (without giving criteria), allowing 5 minutes. This gives students the opportunity to discover the patterns of author's purpose.

2. Once the 5 minutes have elapsed, ask a group to explain their grouping criteria. If the first group doesn't fully grasp, build off of what they are saying by asking a second group, and so on. Compare and contrast the thinking of groups.

3. Explain to students that authors have different reasons behind writing texts. Use the Author's Purpose Anchor Chart (linked in resources) to introduce the 3 main reasons, persuade, inform, and entertain, which create the acronym PIE. 

4. Record in the anchor chart the following information.Have students add this information on page 1 of the Author's Purpose Sort.

• Persuade: The author is trying to get the reader to believe or do something.
• Inform: The author is giving the reader facts and information about a specific topic.
• Entertain: The author is trying to captivate and hold the reader's attention with an interesting story.

5. Confirm the placement of each example text and have students glue under the appropriate label.

• Persuade: commercials, advertisements, reviews, billboards, opinions, political ads
• Inform: documentaries, nonfiction, history/science, news articles, recipes, biographies
• Entertain: fiction, fantasy, mystery, comics, adventure, romance

Extension: Have students write a text for each of the purposes.

Differentiation:  Provide students with actual snippets of texts to sort.

Collect student sort worksheets.