One of the standards that we grade on our third grade report card involves comparing multiple texts by the same author. I try to do one author study each trimester and I have found that it helps my students grasp many skills that go along with Author’s Craft as well. I try to pick authors who are gifted artists of their craft, so I am sure my choices are popular among other teachers as well. The last three author studies I have done include Jack Prelutsky, Patricia Polacco, and the most recent was Eve Bunting. If you would like to see more information about last year’s Eve Bunting study, you can see it here. You can also see more on my author study with Jack Prelutsky, you can find that here.
I gather all of my materials prior to the author study and make sure that I have basically wiped out the library as well. I want to have a lot of text resources. I want my students to be immersed in works by these authors. When I first started doing author studies, I wanted to have students read the different texts and compare them in their reading/writing notebooks. This worked okay, but it was a little cumbersome because students all write in different sizes and my kids with OT issues struggled to draw lines in their notebooks. I struggled to figure out a more simple way to compare texts. I came up with this graphic organizer and it has worked like a charm! Here you can see my students using the organizer with their Eve Bunting books. I have found that sometimes I write the different titles in before copying so that everyone reads the same texts.
Other times I leave them blank and my students are able to have more choice in the texts that they select. I have even copied the organizer double-sided to accommodate the growing number of texts my students WANT to read during the author study. This organizer is so simple, yet so effective. It is a great starting point to help students gather information about the different texts they read. I love to hear the different class discussions filled with information that students have uncovered and recorded on their organizers. It makes my teacher heart skip a beat!
What author studies have you done? How do you help your students organize their findings?
~Heather Johnson 33
