This week we are learning all about Author's Purpose. As students are listening to passages I want them to be asking this question: WHY did the author write this? There are 3 main reasons why authors write....and it is as easy as PIE! Persuade--the author is trying to convince us to think something or do something. Clues for this are words like "you should". Inform--the author is trying to teach us or give us information about a topic. Clues for this include nonfiction text features like photographs as well as lots of information and true facts. Entertain--the author is trying to hold our attention through enjoyment. Most of the time we know it is entertainment because it is FUNNY. Clues for this are story starters like "Once Upon a Time" or pretend characters. Here's an AWESOME example of the same topic but with all three different purposes: Help your child this week find examples of these three types of writing around them. Advertisements in newspapers/magazines are GREAT examples of persuasion as they want us to purchase the item! Just about any storybook is a great example of entertainment....but if you REALLY want to thrill your kiddo, go to www.robermunsch.com and listen to a story. He is my absolute FAVORITE author and his read alouds on the site are PERFECT! :) Newspapers are another great source for informational reading. Although it isn't on a first grade level, the author is writing to give you facts and information about current events.
I hope this helps you as you help your child with Author's Purpose this week! :) As authors ourselves...we will be moving from informational (how-to) writing and will be beginning some persuasion writing in the coming week. Prepare to be CONVINCED! :)
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This week we are learning all about Point of View and answering the question "Who is telling the story?". Students are being detectives using CLUE WORDS to help them determine if a story is told in FIRST person, SECOND person, or THIRD person point of view. Since it has likely been a while since parents have had to use point of view, I thought I'd share some of the "tips and tricks" we use in the classroom to determine if a passage is first, second, or third person point of view. This is the anchor chart we created together as a class to remember the difference in point of view. The box explains WHO is telling the story and the words below are CLUE WORDS to listen for in the passage. We have been listening to fairy tales told from the perspective of the villain this week. So far we have heard the story of Rumpelstiltskin told from Rumpelstiltskin's perspective and also Jack & the Beanstalk told from the Giant's perspective. We know that these stories are told in FIRST person because it is a character in the story who is telling the story. They use words like: I, me, my, we, our. Second person stories are told from the perspective of the author. We have read aloud several books from the LuLu series such as "Lulu's Mysterious Mission". These stories are told by the author and she frequently interrupts her own stories to say things like, "You are probably wondering...." Students are learning that when a story says clue words like you or your it is in Second person. Third person point of view is told by a narrator, someone OUTSIDE the story. This person is narrating or telling the story and what is happening to the characters. The narrator will use clue words like the character's names, he, she, they, and their.
One of the best ways to help your child with point of view is helping them learn the clue words to look for. Typically when kids hear the words "I" or "me" they are much more easily able to identify First Person Point of View than trying to determine if it is a character in the story talking. I hope this helps you work with your child at determining point of view. We've been learning all about adjectives for the past two weeks in our class! Today we did a fun activity to get up and moving! Mrs. Shannon hid adjective cards all around the classroom. We had to be detectives and find the adjectives. We sorted them into two columns: adjectives and not adjectives. We have learned so much about adjectives through this fun activity! Want to extend the learning at home? Ask me to give you adjectives for random things (or people) around the house! Warning: ask your child to describe you at your own risk ;)
After all of our hard work to finish our How To Writing pieces we completed our final drafts and had a publishing party to celebrate! We learned that when we "publish" our writing we are making it available to others to read. This makes us AUTHORS!!!! To celebrate our publishing party we invited a VERY special guest to join us.....our principal, Ms. Susan! We each got a chance to share our writing pieces with Ms. Susan as she walked around the room. She learned A LOT of new skills she didn't know before! Our class has experts in riding a dirt bike, pulling a tooth, making ham sandwiches, doing cartwheels, baking blueberry muffins, catching pokemon, and SO many other skills. Ms. Susan was AMAZED at how much we had learned. After we shared our writing with Ms. Susan, we invited Mrs. Allison's class to come to our room and join us! They have been doing How To Writing too! Mrs. Allison and Mrs. Shannon picked a few students each to get to present their writing out loud to BOTH classes! Ms. Susan was SO proud of us and what excellent writers we were. In fact, she thought we were SO smart that she brought us SMARTIES!!!! She knows HOW TO make us happy :) We loved getting to celebrate being published writers in first grade! We promised Ms. Susan we would invite her back when we finish and publish our next writing pieces.
As we have been learning about story elements and putting a story in sequence, we've been using transitional words like FIRST, NEXT, THEN, and LAST. It only made sense to talk about Informational Writing: HOW TO. We have been using these directional words to explain to one another how to do certain tasks. Earlier in the week we sequenced the steps to brushing your teeth. Yesterday we explained to a partner how to be a good friend. But today was even MORE fun. Today we talked about How to Blow a Bubble! Students got to chew a piece of bubble gum during our lesson and try to blow a bubble of their own! Then we wrote out the simple directions to blowing a bubble to go with our awesome craft! As a class we decided on the steps for blowing a bubble. They turned out GREAT! They were very proud of their writing. I think they look AWESOME in the hallway! Mrs. Allison and I had a lot of fun too, of course! :)
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Mrs. Shannon1st Grade Teacher at Tipton-Rosemark Academy Archives
October 2016
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