Author's Purpose for Informational Texts

We've been hard at work in second grade learning about author's purpose. At the beginning of the year we learned that author's write to persuade, inform, or to entertain {P.I.E.}. We made this little flip book to help us remember...

If you'd like a copy you can grab that here. On each page we wrote what it means to persuade, inform, or entertain a reader. Next year, I will also write examples and features of texts that are written to persuade, inform, and entertain. 

After a quick review of author's purpose, we began to look closer at one piece of the P.I.E., writing to inform. We talked about how authors write to inform by writing to answer a question, explain a procedure, or describe a topic. 

My fabulous teammate came up with a quick foldable {large piece of construction paper folded into thirds} to use to help our students keep track of why authors write to inform. 

She made hers into a "Informational Text Toolbox". I just told my students it was their guide book. 

We looked at various examples of informational texts throughout the week. Here is what we used for writing to answer a question...

writing to explain a procedure... I also used driving directions from our school to a museum that we went to for our second grade field trip as an example. 

writing to describe a topic...

As I gave my kiddos a preview of the texts, I had them hold one finger in the air if they thought the author wrote the text to answer a question, two fingers if they thought the author wrote to explain a procedure/process, and three fingers if they thought the author wrote the text to describe a topic. We really had some great discussions about what in the text led them to think the author wrote to answer, explain, or describe. I had my kiddos write notes in their foldable. They wrote what it means to answer, explain, and describe, examples of texts, and a few features of the texts that will help us to figure out the author's purpose.

Please excuse the mistake in the top picture. My kiddos actually corrected me. They were all like "Mrs. G., it's not cat to kitten, it's kitten to cat." Ha! Teachers make mistakes too!!

Next week they will go on an "Informational Text Author's Purpose Hunt". Each table group will get a set of books. They will have to explain what the author's purpose was for writing each book and what features from the text helped them to determine the author's purpose. If you want a copy of this you can grab that here. I'm also including a "Authors Purpose Hunt" for P.I.E. if you're not quite to informational text purpose yet. The other thought I had with the hunt was to have my kiddos look around in the Media Center to search for texts, but I simply don't have the time this year to do that. I'm struggling to get everything all in before the end of the school year. Ya feel me?! Only five more weeks! AHH!

{Freebie graphics from Krista Wallden and fonts by Kimberly Geswein and Cara Carroll.}