It’s back to school, time to start using anchor charts as reading strategies to help students with their reading skills, and reading comprehension. Anchor charts are essential tools to support and re-iterate the lessons taught in the classroom.
Although the acronym PIE (persuade, inform, entertain) are associated with an author’s purpose activity or anchor chart, some have expanded on PIE, creating the acronym PIE’ED, which includes five author’s purposes (persuade, inform, entertain, explain, describe).
Here is a list of great author’s purpose anchor charts to assist the teacher.
Great Ideas To Use In Your Own Author’s Purpose Activities
Fractus Learning’s Author’s Purpose Anchor Chart: Going Deeper
We thought we would start the list with our take on the traditional author’s purpose freebie! While your P I E based chart is good, it does leave something to be desired. It can lead some students to think too rigidly – particularly those who enjoy bright lines defining categories.
For example, a student can get the picture from a PIE anchor chart that all fiction texts are there to entertain primarily. That’s not true; the best, most impactful works of fiction often work to inform the reader of a problem or persuade one to think about/act on something. I’m sure most teachers explain this in class – but if a third-grade pupil is relying on your author’s purpose anchor chart to refresh their memory, they likely will forget.
Our author’s purpose poster is designed to correct this issue. Hopefully, it will be helpful when teaching reading comprehension strategies. Feel free to print, copy, and use it in your classroom.
The Lemonade Stand Teacher: Author’s Purpose Activity PIE
Activities for author’s purpose anchor charts are one way to teach students the author’s purpose. The Lemonade Stand Teacher site created a fun activity for her classroom with the acronym PIE. She used pie pans from a dollar store and made chef hats for her third graders. The students cut out images and text from old scholastic catalogs.
Each table had three pies representing the persuade, inform, and entertain components of the PIE acronym. The students had lively discussions among themselves as they placed each piece in the right pie pan.
We Are Teachers’ Author Purpose Chart: Beyond PIE
The purpose of most non-fiction authors is more complicated than just supplying information. The author’s purpose determines the type of non-fiction platform the author uses. For example, bloggers write about their passion or interest; journalists spread news and information; scholars write textbooks to educate; companies write white papers to explain intricate processes to potential buyers.
Five ways to help students understand the author’s purpose are:
- Identify the author’s purpose by asking why the author wrote the piece.
- What is the structure the author used? Did they compare and contrast, use a sequence, or gave a problem and proposed the solution?
- What emotions does the text trigger? Why did the author want the reader to experience that emotion?
- Author purpose activities help students connect their writing. An example of an author’s purpose activity is to have students write about different purposes.
- Identify the different purposes within an article.
Cultivating Critical Readers’ Author’s Purpose Chart: Authors are Architects
An author’s purpose is more than a genre; it is more like comparing authors to architects. An architect does not design a building and then find a purpose; no, it is the other way around. An architect designs with the purpose in mind. A hospital is designed for the purpose of healing the sick, a school to educate, and a theater for entertainment.
Likewise, an author designs their story based on the purpose, the reason for writing the text. The structure, genre and words are features to help the author fulfill the purpose of that book. Students should investigate what the author wanted to accomplish with the text.
Teacherificfun Author’s Purpose Anchor Chart: P I E for Second Graders
The beautiful, simplistic PIE anchor chart is an excellent resource for a second-grade classroom. The vivid colors and graphics are designed for introducing students to the author’s purpose in books the students read. Sometimes the simplicity is more helpful in understanding new concepts.
The anchor chart explains the PIE acronym with a clear explanation:
- Persuade: The author writes to get you to do something or believe what they say.
- Inform: The author writes to provide you with information about a topic.
- Entertain: The author writes to tell a story that you may enjoy.
Boom Learning Author’s Purpose: Interactive Digital Task Cards
The free set of Author’s Purpose digital task cards are made available through Boom Learning. The cards include four definition cards and 26 interactive cards. Each card requires the student to identify the author’s purpose for different types of writing.
Students may use laptops, computers, tablets, or smartphones to access the cards and answer the questions. Teachers may print the cards for usage in the classroom or assign tasks to students online. The free deck is available for Fast Play, or teachers may set up an account that allows the teacher to track student’s progress for up to 80 students.