Authorial intent

For much of this term, our English has been focussed around the text Darwin's Dragons by Lindsay Galvin. On Tuesday this week, we looked closely at a couple of the chapters. An author's job is to convey meaning to their readers through description, vocabulary choices, character profiling, interactions...the list goes on! In this lesson, we were thinking about the 'intent' of the author - essentially, why they choose to use particular words and phrases. 

The children were the defence for the author. They had to look at a range of descriptive phrases and defend the author's choices. The children had to explain WHY the author had chosen these words and phrases, explaining the effect that these descriptions have on the reader.

The children had some fabulous discussions and reasoning to defend the author. It also made them think about the choices that they make while writing - what do they want to convey with their vocabulary choices?