English Language Arts and Reading.4.10.G

The student is expected to

identify and explain the use of anecdote.

author's purpose strand teks talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances.

Have students work in small groups to read a text that includes an anecdote. Lead a class discussion on anecdote, and then task students with identifying the anecdote in the selected text. Have students determine why the author chose to include the anecdote.
 

Further Explanation

With this SE, students are expected to recognize which elements of an anecdote are relevant to the author’s larger point and why the author has chosen to include the anecdote as part of the story, explanation, or argument.

Students should identify anecdotes, or short accounts of an interesting or funny incident or person used to make a larger point, in texts and understand why the author has chosen to include the anecdote as part of a story, explanation, or argument. Authors may choose to use anecdotes about their own lives or a character’s life to help illustrate or emphasize a message. For example, in a story that deals with the problems one of the characters has making new friends, another character may share an anecdote about a time when they were in a similar situation.