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I am sick of P.I.E. And no, this isn’t a post Thanksgiving post. I’m not talking about pumpkin, cherry, or apple. I’m talking about the three-letter acronym that attempts to teach something called Author’s Purpose. This is my thirteenth year teaching and P.I.E. has been around at least since then and I’m sure much longer.
But why anyone could ever think that fitting “an author’s purpose” into only three letters is beyond me. |
In the educational world, P.I.E. stands for Persuade, Inform, and Entertain. And teachers all around the nation teach this thing called author’s purpose because it is a standard or objective that they must teach that is in their curriculum. Plus it is a reading objective, not a writing objective. But trying to teach author’s purpose isolated from writing is a really bad idea and it's what causes great teachers to start making posters of cute pieces of pie with sweet little labels titled: Persuade, Inform, and Entertain.
While writing can fit into these three categories, the idea that they only fit into three is quite….amusing, laughable, ridiculous, absurd. Especially when you tell this concept to a group of writers who aren’t teachers.
There are so many other verbs to use when describing authors purpose:
Authors write to:
describe, tell, show, convince, list, define, explain, discuss, prove, advertise, teach, encourage, give an example, warn, amuse, point out, share, present, help, demonstrate, give, reveal, introduce, enlighten, illustrate, communicate.
But even these verbs are just the beginning. They are verbs that describe the final product once you’ve done all the revising and editing.
But what is an author’s real purpose?
I think the real question, the deeper and more rigorous question we need to start asking kids, is why do writers write? I think we need to be able to answer that question before even thinking about boiling it down to an author’s purpose.
So what’s your author’s purpose?
Why do you write?
While writing can fit into these three categories, the idea that they only fit into three is quite….amusing, laughable, ridiculous, absurd. Especially when you tell this concept to a group of writers who aren’t teachers.
There are so many other verbs to use when describing authors purpose:
Authors write to:
describe, tell, show, convince, list, define, explain, discuss, prove, advertise, teach, encourage, give an example, warn, amuse, point out, share, present, help, demonstrate, give, reveal, introduce, enlighten, illustrate, communicate.
But even these verbs are just the beginning. They are verbs that describe the final product once you’ve done all the revising and editing.
But what is an author’s real purpose?
I think the real question, the deeper and more rigorous question we need to start asking kids, is why do writers write? I think we need to be able to answer that question before even thinking about boiling it down to an author’s purpose.
So what’s your author’s purpose?
Why do you write?
