EL READING: Grade 4 – December - Author’s Purpose
Title
Grade 4 – Author’s Purpose
Student Target
Timeline: Grade 4 – December
Essential Idea: Structures/Purpose/Language
Strand: Reading process
Standard: Reading Comprehension
Benchmark: LA.4.1.7.2 The student will identify author’s purpose (e.g. to inform, entertain, explain) inn
text and how an author’s perspective influences text.
Student Target: I can identify the author’s purpose to persuade and how an author’s perspective
influences text.
Background Information: Good readers use a variety of strategies to comprehend text. Summarizing
and inferring help readers remember and retell the main idea and supporting details. Identifying author's
purpose (to persuade, inform, entertain, explain) helps readers understand how the author's perspective
influences text. Using the arts to teach this skill opens new avenues for understanding, makes learning
memorable, addresses multiple intelligences, and develops higher-order thinking skills.
Materials
Teachers
 A projected image of Marc Chagall’s painting “I and the Village,” available online at:
http://www.artchive.com/viewer/z.html
 Art and artist background information for teachers only
Students
 Biography of Marc Chagall
 “What I See/What It Means” chart
Warm-Up
In the past few days we have studied author’s purpose and how it helps us understand how the author
looks at or thinks about something. We learned that when writing a text, an author chooses to either
entertain, inform, or persuade us, and it’s really up to us to figure out just exactly what the purpose is.
Write “Artist’s Purpose” on the board. What do you think is meant by the phrase “artist’s purpose?”
Allow the students to turn and talk, then ask for responses. Artist’s Purpose is similar to author’s
purpose. In this case, it means that an artist has a purpose in creating a painting or sculpture, and the
artist’s perspective definitely affects the look of the artwork.
Lesson/Activity
Give each student a copy of the Marc Chagall (shuh-GAUL) biography. If you know something about
an artist’s life, it often helps you understand his or her artwork. As I read aloud the biography of Marc
Chagall, a famous French artist, underline or highlight anything that seems important to him. For example
if he spent most of his time hiking and camping, that could be underlined. Read the biography aloud as
students underline/highlight text, and then ask several students what they underlined and record
responses on the board. What seems to be important to Marc Chagall? (look for responses such as he
loved his hometown and had many happy memories from that time of his life; he enjoyed geometry; he
lived in the country when he was young; he was a religious person). How do you think these important
things affected his artwork? Project the image of Chagall’s painting “I and the Village.” Marc Chagall
created this oil painting in 1911, and it’s called “I and the Village.” He painted this after he left his
hometown to move far away to Paris, France. Your challenge is to work with a partner to carefully analyze
this painting to see how Marc Chagall’s life experiences affected his work. Give each student a copy of
the “What I See/What It Means” chart. For now you will each complete the first column of this chart
(“What I See”) by writing down items you see in the painting that might have something to do with Marc
Chagall’s life experiences. These items could be people, colors, buildings, and shapes. Think carefully
about the sentences you highlighted in the biography as you analyze this painting. After a few minutes,
ask students to share their responses with the class.
Try It Out
Now that you have identified items in the painting that might relate to Chagall’s life, it’s time to complete
the second column with your partner. In the “What It Means” column, write down what each of the items
you recorded might mean. For example, if you wrote in the first column that there was a church in the
background, in the second column you might write that this means he was a religious person. Give
students about 15 minutes to complete the second column. Circulate to hear the discussions.
Then ask students to share their responses with the class. What do you think Marc Chagall wanted
you to learn from this painting? (look for responses such as he wanted us to appreciate his early life in the
country; he wanted us to feel his joy, etc.). So what would his purpose be in creating this painting? (look
for responses such as “he was explaining his early life and the delight he feels for these years in the
country, and wanted us to experience this as well.”)
Wrap-Up
Today we saw how an artist creates a work of art for a purpose. We also saw how the work of an artist
reflects his life experiences. In this case his painting was full of images about his early life in the country,
and many clues help us feel a sense of joy as we look at the painting (bright colors, smiles, sparkles).
Now, in your journals I would like you to compare and contrast artist’s purpose and author’s purpose. You
may use a Venn Diagram, a chart, or simply write a paragraph.
Daily Assessment
Listen to the turn and talk conversations as well as the discussions you hear while circulating during the
Try It Out activity to assess if students understand artist’s purpose and how it relates to author’s purpose.
Review the “What I See/What It Means” charts to determine who is able to determine artist’s perspective.
Attachments
 Biography of Marc Chagall
 “What I See/What It Means” chart
 Art and artist background information for teachers only
Marc Chagall Biography: His Early Years
Marc Chagall was born in 1887 in a small town called Liozna in Belarus, which was part of Russia at that
time. It was a scenic, country town with many churches and synagogues. Chagall was the oldest of nine
children in a very religious Jewish family, and he had much respect for his hardworking father. He
watched his father get up every day at 6:00 AM to go to synagogue, and then off to his job carrying heavy
barrels of fish all day. Faith and prayer was very important to the Chagall family.
Unfortunately, the Jewish people of the town had suffered prejudice, segregation, and discrimination for
many years from the government. They were not allowed to attend Russian schools, shop in Russian
stores, or even go to Russian hospitals. So they created their very own schools, markets, synagogues,
and hospitals. They even made their own clothes, furniture and farm tools. They were very proud of their
special religious culture.
When Chagall was young he was not allowed to attend the Russian schools in his town, so he studied
Hebrew and the Bible at a Jewish religious school. He also found that he enjoyed math, especially
geometry. It was there at that small school where he saw another student drawing one day, and after
doing some drawings himself he decided to be an artist.
At that time there were only two ways a Jewish student could join the art world: hide the fact that you
were Jewish, or appreciate and publicly express your Jewish culture. Chagall chose the second approach
because he felt that his religion was the source of his artistic talent. And even though he left his
hometown as a teenager to move to another country, he felt his early years in Liozna were etched in his
heart. When he was studying art in Paris he was alone and unable to speak French, but he would
daydream as he painted, thinking about his early life, his religion, and his culture.
As he developed his own artistic style, he began to create symbols that were very meaningful to him.
Some of them represented his religion and culture, such as the tree of life and the sun and moon. Others
represented life in a small country town, such as cows and peasants. To Chagall these symbols were like
dreams that represented how much he missed the hometown he left many years earlier. He also used
many colors to create movement and an exciting atmosphere.
What I See
What It Means
Art & Artist Background Information (for teachers only)
From: The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art,
revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 63
Painted the year after Chagall came to Paris, I and the Village evokes his memories of his native Hasidic
community outside Vitebsk. In the village, peasants and animals lived side by side, in a mutual
dependence here signified by the line from peasant to cow, connecting their eyes. The peasant's
flowering sprig, symbolically a tree of life, is the reward of their partnership. For Hasids, animals were also
humanity's link to the universe, and the painting's large circular forms suggest the orbiting sun, moon (in
eclipse at the lower left), and earth.
The geometries of I and the Village are inspired by the broken planes of Cubism, but Chagall's is a
personalized version. As a boy he had loved geometry: "Lines, angles, triangles, squares," he would later
recall, "carried me far away to enchanting horizons." Conversely, in Paris he used a disjunctive geometric
structure to carry him back home. Where Cubism was mainly an art of urban avant-garde society, I and
the Village is nostalgic and magical, a rural fairy tale: objects jumble together, scale shifts abruptly, and a
woman and two houses, at the painting's top, stand upside-down. "For the Cubists," Chagall said, "a
painting was a surface covered with forms in a certain order. For me a painting is a surface covered with
representations of things . . . in which logic and illustration have no importance."
Chagall’s Use of Symbolism:
Candlestick: two candles symbolize the Shabbat or the Menorah (candlestick with seven candles) or the Hanukkahcandlestick, and therefore the life of pious Jews (Chassidim).
Circles: The moon or sun which represents life and to show that we are all connected to the universe
Cow: sustainer of life, life par excellence: milk, meat, leather, horn, power.
Crosses, crucifixion of Jesus: an unusual subject for a Jewish painter, and likely a response to the rise of antiSemitism
Eiffel Tower: Up in the sky, freedom.
Fiddler: in Chagall’s town Vitebsk the fiddler made music at cross points of life (birth, wedding, death).
Floating people: dream-like fantasy
Goat: Jewish symbol for Day of Atonement, when people make amends for their sins
Herring (often also painted as a flying fish): commemorates Chagall’s father working in a fish factory.
Horses: Freedom.
Houses of Vitebsk (often in paintings of his time in Paris): feelings for his homeland.
Pendulum Clock: time, and modest life (in the time of prosecution at the Loire River the pendulum seems being
driven with force into the wooden box of the pendulum clock).
Rooster: fertility
Scenes of the Circus: Harmony of Man and Animal, which induces Creativity in Man.
Tree: another life symbol.
Windows: Chagall’s Love of Freedom, and Paris through the window.
Not for reproduction; for informational
purposes only
I and the Village
Marc Chagall (French, born Belarus. 1887-1985)
1911. Oil on canvas, 6' 3 5/8" x 59 5/8" (192.1 x
151.4 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2010
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP,
Paris