Podcast Transcript
Questions about author’s purpose ask you why the author wrote the passage. Most authors write for one of these reasons: to persuade (make someone want to do something), to give information, to describe or to entertain. You can remember these four reasons by remembering P.I.D.E. – P for persuade, I for information, D for description and E for entertain.
In the previous episode, we focused on the ninth reading strategy – Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion.
This episode of the CARS & STARS Online podcast is about Identifying Author’s Purpose, which is one of the main reading strategies that underpins CARS & STARS Online.
But what are reading strategies, and why should you know about them?
Learning to read can be a difficult task, but teaching someone to read can be another thing entirely. Learning to decode letters and sound out words are one thing, but neither skill really assists in the most important aspect of reading – that of comprehending what one reads, of being able to understand what something is saying rather than just being able to read it as text.
Understanding text in this way has often been something students have been expected to just pick up on their own – or something that will develop as the ability to decode the text on a literal level does. One reason why this might be the case is because understanding is such a nebulous concept – we can tell students can read something if they can read it to us, but we can only really determine whether they understand it fully with some much more in-depth work.
CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading program designed to turn every student into a proficient and capable reader, with advanced levels of reading comprehension.
The core reading strategies that underpin the entirety of the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program form an underlying instructional framework that recurs throughout every level and provides consistency of understanding and instruction for students and teachers alike.
The twelve reading strategies progress from simpler, lower-order thinking skills such as Finding the Main Idea and Recalling Facts and Details to more complex, higher-order concepts such as Identifying Author’s Purpose and Summarising. Initial questions determine students’ mastery of the text at a literal level, while later questions build on this understanding to get to the heart of their conceptual understanding. In this way, in every reading passage across every reading level, students are being asked to perform the same essential tasks – with their difficulty and complexity increasing as the student progresses through the reading levels.
These research-proven strategies, taken together, offer a complete recipe for increased student awareness of textual features and concepts, and provide a direct and understandable pathway to improving reading comprehension for each and every student.
And now, onto our main strategy for this episode: Identifying Author’s Purpose!
One of the hallmarks of an engaged, competent reader working at a high level of reading comprehension is the ability to see beyond a text – what it merely presents – to look at how a text works and why. The skill of identifying an author’s purpose involves such an ability, looking beyond what a text merely is to understand what an author hoped to achieve by writing it and discerning their point of view.
Readers will be able to identify an author’s rationale for writing a text, looking beyond what is simply said within it to think about why they would choose to write it. Students will understand the suggested agenda behind a text – that is, why the author would opt to write about something and do so in the way that they have.
Traditionally authors write for one of a few main reasons. For example, they might be trying to persuade the reader to their point of view, and so texts will present information coloured by that viewpoint. Being able to identify that a text is trying to persuade does not necessarily mean that it hasn’t been able to do so, but a student being able to tell that the writing is slanted in this way illustrates that they can think critically about texts and display higher-order thinking.
A reader who can critically evaluate a text and the possible reasons for its creation – and particularly the attitude of the person who wrote it – is better equipped to deal with a fast-paced, information-rich 21st-century environment in which the veracity of information and sources should always be called into question, and where the provenance of news is not always easy to ascertain.
For these reasons, Identifying Author’s Purpose is a crucial skill and so one of the twelve main reading strategies that make up CARS & STARS Online. Questions about Identifying Author’s Purpose ask a student to consider why the author wrote the passage, which involves thinking about a text as an artefact created for a specific reason and with a particular agenda.
Students who can think about texts in this way show a developed reading comprehension ability as well as a readiness to critically evaluate what they read that goes beyond simply what a text is about on the surface.
Here are some tips for using the strategy of Identifying Author’s Purpose with any text.
Does the passage mainly give details about something? The author’s purpose is to describe.
Does the author mainly tell a story? The author’s purpose is to entertain.
Does the passage mainly give facts about something? The author’s purpose is to explain.
Does the passage try to make you do or believe something? The author’s purpose is to persuade.
Now that we’ve talked about what this strategy is and how it works, let’s have a go at using Identifying Author’s Purpose with a passage ourselves: and answering questions the way students do in CARS & STARS Online!
First, I’ll read the text. It’s a folktale from Italy.
Giufà lived with his mother, and the two of them were very poor. One time, Giufà went to a farm in the countryside to see if they would give him something for him and his mother to eat. The farmer and his family laughed at the dirty and poorly dressed Giufà and had their dogs chase him away.
When Giufà returned home and told his mother what had happened, she went and bought him a fancy coat, velvet pants and a fine hat. Giufà went back to the farm dressed as a gentleman. This time, the farmer made a big fuss over Giufà and invited him to have dinner with his family.
When they sat down and the food was served, Giufà stuffed his mouth with food, but he also filled up his pockets and pushed food into his hat. “Eat up, my lovely clothes,” Giufà said, “for it is you that have been invited to dinner, not me.”
The folktale was written mainly to
describe the Italian countryside.
entertain listeners with a story that teaches a lesson.
explain why some people are treated differently.
or: persuade readers to visit Italy.
The correct answer here is to: entertain listeners with a story that teaches a lesson.
This answer is correct because the folktale uses a story to teach a lesson about how others should be treated.
You know your answer to the first question is correct because the folktale mainly
contains many details that describe a person, place or thing.
provides facts or tells readers how to do something.
tries to convince readers of something.
or: relates an enjoyable story that teaches a lesson.
The correct answer is: relates an enjoyable story that teaches a lesson.
This answer is correct because the folktale is an entertaining story that teaches a lesson.
Identifying Author’s Purpose is a pivotal skill required for any reader to be informed and critical in today’s age of media saturation and so it is featured in levels B to H of CARS & STARS Online.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects are some of the most important, both for our children’s futures and for the future of our world. But what role does literacy, and advanced reading comprehension, play in such hard-nosed, number-based areas of instruction? Why would a STEM student need to be a good reader as well as, say, an expert mathematician?
For a start, reading comprehension helps with literally everything they do. When students are learning how to build something, conducting a science experiment, or drilling down into the code of a computer program, strong reading skills help them process and interpret text so they can better follow instructions and understand what to do. Better readers can do all this better: faster and more accurately, with more room for critical and creative thinking, because their reading comprehension ability means they don’t get bogged down in the difficulties of understanding how to do something, but instead can think about why they are and what they’re getting from it – as well as how they can go beyond what they’re doing and do it better.
Reading comprehension skills also help students decode and learn the complex and unfamiliar vocabulary words that might crop up in STEM subjects more quickly, and without them causing worry or anxiety when first encountered. As with all aspects of enhanced reading comprehension, this has flow-on effects for every aspect of a subject. A highly competent reader will be able to better apply new knowledge to action when tackling a project, and do so quickly and with ease, while others might struggle or have a harder time of it.
The twelve reading strategies that underpin CARS & STARS Online are primarily centred on helping readers not just to be able to read, but to be able to understand. As each student progresses through the lessons, they are repeatedly engaged with questions on these strategies that gauge how well they have understood the text they have read and require them to think critically about it – a vital component of STEM understanding.
CARS & STARS Online has been designed to ensure that tomorrow’s readers can engage critically and informedly with texts they read. From the simplest levels of the program to the most complex, CARS & STARS Online is all about emphasising understanding and the development of excellent reading comprehension skills. This works hand in hand with all aspects of STEM instruction to create not just better readers, but students who are better positioned to take on all subjects – be they STEM or anything else they put their minds to.
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
If you have missed out our previous episode, please click here. The next episode will be focused on the eleventh reading strategy – Interpreting Figurative Language.
If you’d like to know when our next podcast is dropping, you can subscribe to us below. Hawker Brownlow Digital, if you don’t know, is the place where bright minds and passionate people strive to think great and create a future worth teaching and learning for.
See you in the next episode, and thanks for listening!
