Grade 6 English Language Arts | FL B.E.S.T. Standard: ELA.6.R.2.3
Analyze how the author's purpose and perspective influence the text.
By the end of this unit, students will be able to:
| Term | Definition | Student-Friendly Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Author's Purpose | The reason an author writes a text | Why the author wrote this - what they want to accomplish |
| Persuade | To convince readers to believe or do something | The author wants to change your mind or get you to take action |
| Inform | To give readers factual information | The author wants to teach you facts about a topic |
| Entertain | To amuse or engage readers for enjoyment | The author wants you to enjoy reading - to laugh, feel excited, or be moved |
| Explain | To help readers understand how or why something works | The author wants to make a complex topic clear and understandable |
| Tone | The author's attitude toward the subject | How the author "sounds" - serious, playful, angry, hopeful, etc. |
| Rhetorical Appeals | Strategies to persuade: ethos, pathos, logos | Tools authors use to convince you - credibility, emotion, or facts/logic |
| Purpose | Text Types | Key Techniques |
|---|---|---|
| Persuade | Editorials, ads, speeches, reviews | Strong opinions, emotional language, calls to action, evidence |
| Inform | News articles, textbooks, reports | Facts, statistics, neutral tone, objective language |
| Entertain | Stories, poems, humor pieces | Vivid descriptions, dialogue, suspense, humor |
| Explain | How-to guides, science texts, manuals | Step-by-step instructions, examples, analogies, definitions |
| Day | Focus | Activities |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to P.I.E.E. | Define the four purposes with examples. Use Student Concept Worksheet. |
| 2 | Identifying Techniques | Analyze how authors use specific techniques to achieve their purpose. |
| 3 | Rhetorical Appeals | Introduce ethos, pathos, and logos. Practice identifying appeals in ads and speeches. |
| 4 | Multiple Purposes | Analyze texts with combined purposes. Complete Practice Worksheet. |
| 5 | Assessment | Administer FAST Format Quiz. Review and reteach as needed. |
After reading any text, have students answer three questions in order:
1. What? - What is the author's main purpose?
2. How? - What techniques does the author use to achieve it?
3. How well? - Did the author effectively achieve their purpose? Why or why not?
This builds critical evaluation skills beyond simple identification.
Bring in print ads, commercial transcripts, or social media ads. Have students identify:
- The obvious purpose (persuade you to buy)
- The techniques used (celebrity endorsement = ethos, emotional images = pathos, statistics = logos)
- The secondary purposes (entertain to keep attention, inform about product features)
Find three texts about the same topic written with different purposes. For example, about dogs:
- A news article about a rescue (inform)
- An adoption ad (persuade)
- A funny story about a mischievous puppy (entertain)
Compare how purpose changes the writing style, word choice, and structure.
Help students recognize when purpose shifts within a text. A news article might inform about climate change, then shift to persuade readers to take action. Ask students to identify where the shift occurs and how they can tell the purpose changed.
Correction: Most texts combine purposes. A restaurant review entertains with witty descriptions while also informing about the food and persuading readers whether to visit. Teach students to identify the PRIMARY purpose while recognizing secondary ones.
Correction: Inform provides facts (what). Explain helps understanding (how/why). A text might inform that volcanoes erupt, while another explains the scientific process of how magma rises and causes eruptions.
Correction: Fiction can persuade (allegories like Animal Farm) or inform (historical fiction). Nonfiction can entertain (humorous memoirs) or persuade (op-eds). Genre doesn't determine purpose.
Correction: Main idea is WHAT the text is about. Purpose is WHY the author wrote it. A text's main idea might be "recycling benefits the environment" while the purpose is to persuade readers to recycle more.
On the FAST assessment, author's purpose questions typically ask students to:
Key Strategy: Teach students to ask "Why did the author write this?" before asking "What is the text about?" Purpose drives everything else.