In third grade we are in the middle of our first author study. We chose the beloved Eve Bunting! In our reading anthology we read, “A Days Work” which is a wonderful story with a great message about telling the truth. Eve Bunting always tackles the tough issues, and she is a great author to use to teach about theme and the message in a text.
For this author study I wanted to use multiple sources so that the students had to take notes and pull their notes together to respond. I used an interview with Eve Bunting from Scholastic. I also used a biography from Scholastic‘s website. To round out the reading, I included a video clip of Eve Bunting from YouTube.
First, the students read the biography with a partner. They used their highlighters to highlight important information about Eve Bunting. After they read the biography, they wrote down three important facts on mini sticky notes.
Next, we talked about what an interview is and they were able to read the interview with their partners. It was fun to watch them take on the roles of interviewer and Eve Bunting as they read through the questions and answers. Again, they highlighted three important facts and wrote them on sticky notes.
After they completed the sticky notes from the interview they watched the YouTube video clip twice. This allowed them watch one time to absorb the information, and a second time to take notes. Again, they had to write three facts on sticky notes.
After each step, the students had to sort and stick their sticky notes on our class chart about Eve Bunting. On this chart, they had to decide if their fact had to do with her family, her writing or “other.” The students loved to see the facts grow after each step! They also loved that we used different colored stickies for each step.
After they finished gathering notes about Eve, they answered a questions about Eve’s character. I asked them, “Do you think that Eve Bunting is a good role model? Use evidence to support your answer.”
In the next post I am going to talk about what we did next in our author’s study.
You can get the Eve Bunting Author Study that I created in my TpT store if you would like.
~Heather
