Apples and Author's Purpose

Our first graders have spent a lot of time learning about authors.  They are quick to tell you that an author writes the words of a story.  With this understanding solid, we moved into a discussion of WHY authors write.  We spent 2 weeks thinking about author's purpose, using a text pair about apples.   We began by thinking about how sometimes authors write to entertain.  We decided that entertain means to help us have fun or enjoy something.  So an author who writes to entertain writes the story so that people can have fun reading it.  

We read our fiction book, Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellogg and talked about how we know this books is meant for people to enjoy.  The tall tale worked well because there are all kinds of reasons we know the information is not true or trying to teach us something!  Then I gave each student a large piece of paper divided in half, a green square, a red square, a brown strip and a glue stick.  I also gave everyone a sentence that said "Authors can write to entertain, like in the story Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellogg."  

The kids glued their sentence on first and then ripped the paper to make an abstract apple tree.  We talked about how this apple tree is just for fun, just like when an author writes to entertain.

The next week when the kids arrived for library, we reviewed authors write to entertain.  Then we thought about other reasons an author might decide to write a story.  We decided that sometimes authors write to inform, or to tell us new or important information.  We read our non-fiction book, Pick Me an Apple by Shelley Rotner. Then we talked about the new things we could learn from reading this book.  In the time between library visits the kids had taken a field trip to an apple orchard so they were full of connections and examples which made for a very fun and very lively apple fact discussion.  After our conversation, I passed out the paper they began last week.  I showed them how they would need to work on the blank side this week.  They began by gluing down a sentence strip that said, "Sometimes authors write to inform, to tell us new or important information like in Pick Me an Apple by Shelley Rotner."  We then labeled the parts of an apple.  I gave them the apple cut out, a small white square, scissors, a glue stick and markers.  We all cut our square into a circle for the core of the apple and then glued the apple and the core in place.  Next, we drew seeds on the apple.  Finally, we labeled the parts: skin, stem, seeds, flesh.  I wrote in big letters on the whiteboard so the kids could copy if they needed to.

Neither project took a long time, but using a text pair allowed the kids to have a very concrete experience with an author writing to entertain and an author writing to inform.  Adding the project gave them a visual to serve as a anchor chart as they look deeper into author's purpose.