Purpose Anyone?

When dissecting Common Core, I am constantly grappling with what I think I know vs. what is really truth vs. what the authors’ intend for us to do. While some ideas are clearly articulated, expanded upon, and delineated with examples, others are not. One such area is the idea of author’s purpose. If you actually search those words within the Common Core standards, it will come up blank. However, throughout the primary grades, there is a consistent reference to the author’s main purpose or reasons. I am currently examining CCSS-Literacy.RI.2.6, which states that students should be able to do the following:

Identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe.

This sounds simple enough, but my quandary lies within this – when we think about author’s purpose, we usually do not quarantine it to one genre. Generally, when broaching author’s purpose, teachers think of PIE – persuade, inform, and entertain. I also like to add in describe. However, these categories do not all work well for informational text. The terms specified in Common Core are DEA – describe, explain, or answer. Describe for expository text would be very different from describe for poetry or how an author may use a description to paint an image of scenery. The nuances within these three terms are difficult to separate. Let’s say a text was procedural, such as How to Build a Duct Tape Wallet. One could justify that the author is describing how to make the wallet. On the other hand, this procedure, while being descriptive, is also an explanation. But why did the author write this text? One could easily say to answer the question of how to make a wallet. Even in the dictionary, describe is defined as “to explain something.” So why the three different terms? Was it to be all-inclusive because in the bigger picture, students need to understanding that informational text is to inform, and DEA are three ways of teaching the reading? And what about the other reasons author’s write outside of the informational world? Why has that been left off completely?

When I searched the internet to see what other people determined, it seems the consensus is to continue making it as easy as PIE. Continue to examine narratives, poetry, and informational text for author’s purpose. However, within informational, be specific on what exactly is being taught. Perhaps we could use an organizer like the one below to think about the structure of author’s purpose:

When thinking about the purpose of Common Core, it has been made clear by the authors that there is an increased focus on critical thinking and informational text. I believe the point of the authors’ with standard RI.2.6 was to ensure that students think critically about the point of what they are reading so that they read accordingly. From my perspective, in order for students to think critically, they must also understand why author’s write any specific type of text, and through that lens, will be able to think about the organization to increase comprehension across the genres. So while author’s purpose does not make as clear of an appearance in literature, students must understand the difference between genres, and therefore understand the differences among why authors write, thereby, empowering themselves as writers to decide upon their purpose and structure their writing to that end.