Author's Purpose

Do you carpool to school? Do you take a bus? It should be a requirement for everyone to either share a ride or walk to school every day. If we are serious about saving the planet, we must take steps to conserve energy and reduce fossil fuel emissions.

• Persuade

• Inform

• Entertain

• Explain

Caroline Bartlett Crane was born in 1858 in Hudson, Wisconsin. After working as a teacher, she became a journalist and an ordained minister. Crane was an activist who worked toward women’s voting rights in the United States. Her tireless efforts at improving sanitation in large cities—especially in the slums where the poorest residents lived—earned her the title “America’s Housekeeper.”

• Persuade

• Inform

• Explain

• Describe

“Once upon a time in a magical kingdom, there lived a great hero. He was about to set out on a dangerous quest!”

• Explain

• Persuade

• Entertain

• Inform

What is the purpose of a narrative written by another student about the first time she tried to ice skate?

• Entertain

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• Persuade

• Describe

Sarah knew time travel was impossible. Everything she’d learned in science told her it couldn’t be done. But as she looked around the street, noting the horse-drawn carriages and the women dressed in long dresses and hats, she realized she was in the nineteenth century.

• Persuade

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• Entertain

• Describe

Hellen Keller was born in 1880 and died in 1968. Despite being deaf and blind, Keller was a political activist, a lecturer, an author, and a tireless advocate for those with disabilities.

• Entertain

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Many people buy vegetables in the grocery store without knowing where they were grown or how they arrived at the store. Supermarkets should be required to label each fruit or vegetable with a sign telling shoppers where and when the food was grown and how far it traveled to the supermarket.

• Inform

• Explain

• Persuade

• Describe

What is the purpose of a book of jokes about being in the fourth grade?

• Explain

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• Persuade

• Inform

Sam looked into the microscope. He couldn’t believe what he saw! It was like an entire universe existed in this drop of water he’d taken from inside the meteor that had fallen on his lawn. This was like no other water he’d ever seen!

• Inform

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• Entertain

Today, it is not uncommon to see women wearing high-heeled shoes. However, the first high-heeled shoes were actually made for men back in the 1500s. The heels helped soldiers keep their feet in the stirrups of their saddles as they rode into battle.

• Perdusade

• Inform

• Entertain

• Describe