Halloween Author's Purpose

I love holidays!  I tend to go all out.  I am the one that goes a bit overboard with decorating.  My favorite decorations are the bats in my library area and the wall clings/cobwebs/tombstones stairway area.

On to some school stuff.  This week we one skill we are teaching is author's purpose.  This is one of my favorite things to teach!  In honor of Halloween, I thought that I would share some of my favorite activities for author's purpose.

1.  Fly Swat - Write Persuade, Inform, and Entertain on different cards.  Prepare cards with small paragraphs with different types of author's purpose.  Students use fly swatters to 'swat' the answer. Click here for a link to a website with some great worksheets with examples.  As a bonus, you can use these worksheets for a quick check of the skill.

2.  Writing - Last year, I found individual bags of candy corn.  I wrote the different types of author's purpose on index cards.  Students then need to write a story or paragraph about the candy corn using the author's purpose on their index cards.  This can be done with any kind of candy.  I like the individual bags because there is information printed on the packages.  It makes it easier for those that get inform.

3.  Scholastic Book Orders - Have students cut out the different books and glue them onto a sheet labeled with the different types of author's purpose.  

4.  TPT - I found this great file folder game on TPT!  Click here to check it out.  I can't wait to try this out in my classroom.