5 Author’s Purpose Activities to Learn Persuade, Inform, & Entertain!

authors purpose activities

I have 5 author’s purpose activities that your students are going to LOVE!

Author’s purpose is a fun topic to teach, but it can be tough to find activities to use to learn and review this reading strategy concept.

I have a list of activities that hopefully will be new to you that you may find useful in your 3rd grade classroom!

Personally, I think “persuade” is always the most challenging out of the 3 purposes to teach!

These activities will get all the author’s purpose concepts to “click” in your students’ minds and get that lightbulb moment to happen.

Keep reading to learn all about these author’s purpose activities!

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Idea #1: PIE on a plate

Since using the acronym “PIE” is a great way to remember all the types of author’s purpose… what better way than to make an author’s purpose activity on a plate?!

Let me tell you how to make these (super simple and absolutely no work involved for youwoohoo!).

Pass out a paper plate to each student.

Students will divide the plate into thirds with a marker.

On each third, they will write: Persuade, Inform, and Entertain.

In each third, students will write the different types of text that they would find in each category!

They can also draw pictures of text in each category too (like a book, play script, etc.).

They can get as creative as they’d like!

Idea #2: Scholastic catalog sort

I saw this idea years ago on Pinterest and thought it was the coolest! (I’m not sure which teacher-author I originally saw it from – let me know if you can remember!!!).

We all have those months that we forget to pass out the Scholastic fliers (whoops!).

Or maybe you accidentally ordered the wrong grade level (whoops again… been there done that).

Or maybe you just have a few extras each month.

This is a great ELA center!

Have a stack of Scholastic catalogs.

Students will flip through the catalogs and cut out book pictures for each text (WARNING: it’s really hard to find books for “persuade!”).

Then, they can glue the book pictures into their notebooks.

If you don’t have many catalogs available, you can also just have students cut out the books and then sort them (no gluing), so that the pictures are reusable again and again for otherstudents (just keep all the little book pictures in a Ziploc bag!).

This is super fun, because who doesn’t like a little bit of shopping and catalog browsing with their schoolwork 🙂

Idea #3: Write their own author’s purpose

Students can try writing an example of their own in their notebooks!

Have students write down the heads “Persuade,” “Inform,” and “Entertain” down in their notebook.

They are going to write a text example for each!

I notice that students do the best when you say to pick the same topic for all the text… like cats, birds, cars, etc.

Students can use this topic to write with three different author’s purpose.

Let’s say that the student picks the topic baseball.

For entertain, they could write a story about a girl hitting a homerun and winning a game for the team.

Inform could be about the life of Babe Ruth.

Persuade could be that everyone should play baseball because it’s so fun!

They can get as creative as they would like to show off their knowledge of the various types of author’s purpose!

authors purpose activities

Idea #4: Author’s purpose color by number worksheets

These author’s purpose color by number worksheets are super fun and your students will be incredibly engaged as they are learning!

These no-prep color by number worksheets are fun and simple to use.

Students read mini passages, then identify if the author’s purpose is persuade, inform, or entertain.

After circling their answer, their answer choice will direct them to color the black and white picture a certain color.

(I also have a blog post that talks more about these color by number reading worksheets).

That’s it! Lots of practice, but your students are going to be happy and excited to complete these color by number worksheets (I’m serious!).

Click HERE to grab these!

authors purpose activities

Idea #5: Go digital with author’s purpose activites!

This digital resource is FUNENJOYABLE, and INTERACTIVE!

The activities include both drag-&-drop questions and short answers.

These digital activities for this reading comprehension strategy will work PERFECTLY in your classroom.

Yep – your students will be engagedfocused, and accountable for their learning.

Do you have a small amount of prep time each day? (Let’s be honest… everyone is nodding “yes” to that question!). These activities are easy to assign and have no additional prep for you.

Digital learning is a way for students to independently practice the content that they have learned in class. 

Here’s what is included in Author’s Purpose for Google Classroom:

Click HERE to check it out!

Need more resources for teaching author’s purpose?

You can grab these resources at Glitter in Third on TPT!

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