Hello Reader,
Happy last Sunday of May.
I do not know about you, but something shifts for me at the end of May. The school year is either wrapping up or already done, the energy changes, and I always feel this pull toward something quieter and more intentional. Not less productive just more purposeful.
That is what this newsletter is this week. A wrap up before June starts. It's all about one skill, book and one move you can use right now.
Let's go!
Here is everything you need right now: Author's Purpose
Author's purpose is one of those skills we teach early and sometimes stop going deep on.
We hand students PIE — Persuade, Inform, Entertain — and call it a lesson.
But here is what I keep coming back to: PIE is where author's purpose starts. It is not where it ends.
The deeper question is this: Why THIS book, for THESE readers, at THIS moment?
That question changes everything. It moves students from labeling a category to actually thinking about a writer's choices and it works with any book you pick up this summer.
This Week's Read Aloud: The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad
Perfect for the first days of summer reading, a new unit, or honestly any morning where you want the room to feel something.
Ibtihaj Muhammad wrote this book for her daughter. That is not a detail to skip it is the lesson. She had a specific child in mind. A specific need. A specific hope for how that child would feel after the last page.
That is author's purpose in action a category and a reason in one.
One Teaching Move
Before you read The Proudest Blue, ask your students:
"Who do you think needed this book?"
After the last page, come back to it:
"Were you right? And could you have needed it too?"
That two-question arc is author's purpose without a worksheet. The first question activates prediction and empathy. The second one makes it personal.
Save this. It works with any read aloud you pick up this summer.
From My Desk
I have been thinking a lot about author's purpose lately, not just as a skill I teach, but as a question I have had to answer for myself.
This year I wrote a children's book.
I have been sitting with that sentence for a while before saying it out loud. But June feels like the right time to start sharing more about it about the character I created, why she exists, and what I hope a child feels when someone reads this book to them.
I'll share more about this in June, stay tuned as I unveil more...
The Sunday Reset is about to get a little more personal. I think you are going to like where it goes.
This Week's Free Resources:
Plan your Summer Reading with the FREE Reading Reflection Logs
All My End of Year Activities
If you are tutoring or running summer school this summer — the Garden of MTSS Read Aloud Bundle is built for tiered support across one anchor read. Everything from Tier 1 through Tier 3 already mapped.
And if you are not already on the Sunday Reset list, forward this to a grades teacher who would get something out of it.
In literacy and less overwhelm
Patty