Identifying Point of View
I think that many teachers have struggled over the past few years to expand their teaching of "point of view" beyond the traditional first and third person narratives and into identifying an author's perspective. There is a gradient of expository texts, from objective texts in which the author's point of view is faint and difficult to hear, to biased texts dripping with the author's opinions. As I explained to my students, most texts exist in a middle territory in which the generalizations and main ideas of the text do most of the work of conveying the author's point of view.
As we started to identify point of view, I found that my students needed the academic language necessary for this task. I designed this resource to give students help as they work on defending their claims about the author's point of view.
Link to Google Doc
Supporting Point of View
At this point in the year, many of my sixth graders are writing lengthy text quotes as evidence for their claims. I adapted a chart from the EngageNY materials to help them find the best evidence for their assertions. In the photo you can see the chart we filled out together based on the "Columbian Exposition" text from my Paraphrasing and Summarizing materials over on TpT.
This chart worked wonderfully with students, especially the "Word Choice" column. Even students who struggle with identifying the point of view can find the author's words that carry the point of view. A nice way to mix it up is also to show students text evidence and have them infer the author's point of view conveyed by that text evidence.
Link to Author's Point of View chart
Helping students to listen for author's point of view in expository text is important! What successes have you had?
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