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E3.8.A

Description: Analyze the author's purpose, audience, and message within a text.
Maps to Reading Plus skills: 6A, 6A

Exemplars

6A: Recognizing Author's Intent

6A: Recognizing Author's Intent

Description: Recognizing Author's Purpose

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: K-6

K-6

Grade level: 11
Word count: 2418 words
Author: Diane Lang
Synopsis: After a serious football injury, Sam gets a highly trained monkey that not only assists him physically but helps him emotionally.
Excerpt: Sam gazed up at the full moon, and then back at Avery and Gretchen. "I'm coming back, Avery, I know it, like a work in progress."

Sam continued to hold Avery's hand as he sang "Dancing in the Moonlight," with Avery wheeling his chair side to side and Gretchen shrieking and clapping her hands.

Question: Why does the author use the images of "dancing" and "moonlight" in the selection?
  1. to emphasize her theme of miracles and hope
  2. to demonstrate how Gretchen liked to imitate Sam.
  3. to highlight the importance of Sam's football game
  4. to reinforce Gretchen's ability to brighten Sam's life

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Assess the value or importance of an author's choice of prose, setting, or characterization in a selection.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions

6A: Recognizing Author's Intent

6A: Recognizing Author's Intent

Description: Recognizing Author's Purpose

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: K-39

K-39

Grade level: 11
Word count: 1650 words
Author: Christopher Morley
Synopsis: If you have ever been asked to write a certain number of words on a topic, you'll certainly understand the frustration expressed by the newspaper reporter who penned this essay.
Excerpt: We thought of some books we had seen up on East Fifty-ninth Street, in that admirable row of old bookshops, particularly Mowry Saben's volume of essays, "The Spirit of Life," which we are going back to buy one of these days, so please let it alone. We then got out a small notebook in which we keep memoranda of books we intend to read and pored over it zealously. Just for fun, we will tell you three of the titles we have noted there: "The Voyage of the Hoppergrass," by E.L. Pearson, "People and Problems," by Fabian Franklin, and "Broken Stowage," by David W. Bone.

Question: Why does Morley list the names of the books he purchased on Fifty-ninth Street in this essay?
  1. Listing the books adds words to the essay and brings him closer to meeting his word count.
  2. He wanted to make sure the books received some publicity.
  3. Listing the books allows him to demonstrate he is a well-read person.
  4. He was friendly with the authors of the books he mentions.

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: How effective were the words and writing style used by the author of a selection? Explain why.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions