1. Do Now: Read the texts below and identify the ways in which the passages are similar and different. List them in your notebook.

2. Aim: How can readers identify an author’s purpose and intended audience?

3. Why Do Authors Write? For many reasons!
-An author may give you facts or true information about a subject.
-Some authors write fiction stories or stories to entertain you.
-Some authors may write to persuade or to try to get you to do or think something.

4. Why Authors Write
Usually to:
-Persuade
-Inform
-Entertain

5. How to Determine An Author’s Purpose
Find the main idea
Ask yourself who or what kind of person would be interested in the subject
Find the author’s evidence and ask yourself who would be persuaded by the support/evidence
Identify the author’s choice in words--what kind of language is s/he using?

6. Model Text: Author’s Purpose and Audience
Fuller’s purpose for writing “Young Students” is to share with the general public the research conducted by Plotnick and students from East Side Middle. He uses casual language, describing the “hallmarks” of academic literature to share with readers the experiments conducted by Plotnick and students on “several captive elephants in northern Thailand.”

7. Let’s Revisit those First 2 Texts...

8. Homework: Due Tomorrow & Rubric
Read “In a Bird’s Nest: An Animal Behavior Puzzle” and identify both the author’s purpose and audience.
--Explain why the identified purpose & audience are correct by using logic, reason, and textual evidence (at least 1 piece for both purpose & audience)

9. New Reading Assignment
At your tables come up with one to two new reading assignment options
As a class, we’ll discuss the options