Does anyone have any good ideas on teaching author's viewpoint? That's what I'll be teaching for my observation lesson this week. This is for 4th grade, and from experience, I know that it's a difficult skill. I dislike that it's taught so early in the year, but I just follow my curriculum. I know my administration is looking for the students to be engaged. So the less paper/pencil and themore active it can be, the better.
Also, what is your opinion? Is it better/easier for the students to identify the author's viewpoint first and then find details from the text that support the viewpoint? Or is it better/easier to identify details (adjectives, opinions) first and "add them all together" to figure out the author's viewpoint?
Author's viewpoint is the author's opinion about a topic or how he/she feels about a topic. Author's viewpoint comes up in nonfiction writing. In general, a viewpoint can be positive or negative but you can get more specific than that.
Full day kindergarten is such a waste of time. The students spend part of the day napping, they could do that at home. Kindergartners don't gain any academics over their half-day K peers.
In the above example, the author has a negative viewpoint towards full day kindergarten. In other words, s/he is not in favor of full day kindergarten. That example can be rewritten to show a positive viewpoint in favor of full day kindergarten.
Note- the above example, is not necessarily my viewpoint, it is just serving as an example.
I am actually getting ready to teach the same lesson on author's vewpoints... I decided to compare the Cinderella story to Tony Johnstons story "BIGFOOT CINDERELLA" I am going to have the students compare and contrast the two and then we will discuss how the author's viewpoints are different. Wish me Luck!
The books mentioned, The True Story of the 3 Pigs, The Pain and the Great One, are NOT author's viewpoint - those are examples of point of view. Author's viewpoint is how the book's author feels about the subject, and point of view is from the viewpoint of a character in a book.
I will be using , Encounter, by Jane Yolen to discuss author's viewpoint because the words chosen by the author, and the illustrations let the students determine how the author felt about Christopher Columbus.
powerpoints that I used last year. They had brief bits of text that the kids read and determined if the author had a positive or negative viewpoint about the topic. After determining the author's viewpoint, students had to find examples in the text to prove it... we focused on word choice as the vehicle the author used. I will try to attach a file...
I just joined this website to get the slide show! I often am searching the internet for materials for class and it has come on this website many times but I wasn't up for joining until this topic came up. It is a tough one to find good materials! I should of joined long ago! Thanks so much for all of you sharing, I hope I'll be able to contribute also.