I am Beth Cunningham, a Fourth Grade teacher at Ridgeview Elementary. I attended Sulphur Spring Elementary and graduated from Daniel Boone High School. I received my Bachelor of Science in Education degree from East Tennessee State University, and received my Master of Education degree from Tusculum College. I previously taught at Sulphur Springs Elementary for ten years in 6th-7th grades and Kindergarten. Since moving to Ridgeview in 2009, I have had the pleasure of teaching 4th grade. I am proud to be a Ridgeview Raptor! I am a life-long resident of the Gray Community. I have been married for twelve years to Mike, and we have three children that also attend Ridgeview Elementary. Austin is in 5th grade, Avery is in Kindergarten, and Alex attends the Pre-K program.

Today, I will continue teaching my students “Author’s Purpose” through engaging them in Shift 4 of English and Language Arts/Literacy. During this shift, my students have become familiar with the increased emphasis on close reading and textual evidence in the Common Core State Standards and classroom practices that foster these. The Common Core State Standards set expectations for students to read text carefully, attend to details, follow the line of arguments, and cite details from the text to support their conclusions. Today, my students are in their learning communities engaged in evidence based conversations to determine the Author’s Purpose of writing. - Group “A” is actively engaged in a “close read” with the teacher through the use of iPad’s. The iPad’s were gained through a grant from the QUEST Foundation. The students will scan a QR code from the Smartboard to determine the reading passage; they will incorporate this file into a PDF file which allows the students to Annotate during the close read activity. The teacher will be the facilitator asking Higher Order Thinking (HOT) questions and textual evidence through-out the passage.- Group “B” is independently engaged in reading the newspaper to determine the Author’s Purpose of an article of his/her choice. They will draw conclusions based on evidence from their reading, and re-create the article in his/her writing journal using a different type of Author’s Purpose. - Group “C” is actively engaged in sorting through Scholastic Book Orders and charting the Author’s Purpose – to Persuade, Inform, or Entertain. - Group “D” is independently reading a Non-Fiction passage from the computer to determine the Author’s Purpose. He/she will be charting information and writing a summary of the passage in their writing journal.