Move Beyond P-I-E and Get the Receipt: A Better Way to Teach Author's Purpose

Let me make a confession: A few years ago, I got very invested in the drama between Taylor Swift, Kanye West, and Kim Kardashian. For me, one of the biggest take aways from that drama was the phrase "Show me the receipts." I'd heard my students talk about "receipts" before, but something about the Kanye-Taylor drama really made that phrase memorable to me.

As a teacher, I turned that phrase over in my mind. Where are the receipts in the English classroom? Well, when students are looking for author's purpose, they are looking for the receipt!

Until this year, I'd used the classic P-I-E to teach author's purpose, but I'd long found that acronym to be limited. P-I-E lacks nuance. It doesn't meet students' needs as they begin to read more complex texts.

That's where getting the receipt comes in! "Receipt" is my new acronym for teaching author's purpose. It offers students the chance to analyze texts at greater depth.

To help you bring "Receipt" to your classroom, I've put together three charts, text questions, sentence stems, and 2 anchor chart options. These come with lots of options so you can determine which tools meet the needs of your students! Everything is available in a .pdf and a Google Slides presentation. 

Includes:

• Questions for determining author's purpose
• Sentence steps for determining author's purpose
• "Look Fors" to determine author's purpose
• 2 anchor charts
• 3 book marks

Use these tools to help students attack these texts:

-6 Tools for Teaching "Privileged" by Kyle Korver

-4 Tools for Teaching "The Danger of a Single Story"

-3 Tools for Teaching "The Immigrant Contribution" by JFK

-"Words and Behaviors" by Aldous Huxley Analysis Questions

-Thomas Paine's The Crisis No. 1 Questions, Prompts, SOAPTone, and Google Form

-"Speech at the Virginia Convention" Questions, Prompts, and SOAPSTone Analysis

-"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" SOAPSTone Analysis and Reading Questions

Keep in touch and get more great ideas for teaching secondary ELA!

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Read more about poetry annotations on Moore English. Check out these posts:

-How to Introduce a New Text

-4 Steps to Pre-Read ANY Poem

-4 Steps to Pre-Read ANY Nonfiction of Informational Text

-How to Teach Text Features: Strategies for Student Success

-15 Places to Find New, High-Quality Texts for Your Classroom

-10 Interesting Poems for Helping Students Master Inference

-10 Memorable Poems for Helping Students Master Main Idea

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