Teaching students to dig deep into a text can be challenging, especially when today’s students aren’t regular readers. Since school started four weeks ago, I’ve been trying to inspire mine to establish a daily habit of reading and to read deeply.
Today, we tackled diction and tone.
I began the lesson by having three students “act out” a sentence, each using a different tone.
I just saw someone smash into Mrs. Huff’s car in the parking lot.
One student assumed an angry tone, another an amused tone, and the last an apathetic one. The class had to guess their tone.
We then transitioned from voice to text. I quickly explained that since we can’t hear the author’s voice, our only clue to how he feels–his attitude or tone–about what he’s writing about is hidden in the text itself. If we look at the words (diction) he uses, we can often figure out his tone.
After showing a few sentences, modeling how diction points to tone, I put students into teams and had each team read Langston Hughes A Dream Deferred. Before class I created an Etherpad for each team, then put the link to the pad on our class wiki. I included directions and a copy of the poem on the pad. Students then read and discussed the poem within their teams, identified diction with strong connotations, and brainstormed tones. They then wrote a paragraph explaining the tone of the poem and giving at least three details to support their explanation.
I had to prod a few groups by asking them if they knew what deferred meant and for a few groups asking them how they might find out what it means–mind each student has his own laptop, and a few students looked dumbfounded as to how they might define the word!
I was able to assess their understanding by reading all the team’s responses at the end of the day.
Not every lesson is successful, but it’s exciting when the stars align–and the tools and strategies and students’ hormones–and magic and learning happens!
JustRead! 
Elizabeth
September 21, 2009
Thank you so much for posting your breakdown of this activity! I struggle with teaching these concepts to my own English students, and I have a feeling the information you gave here is going to be enormously helpful. I’m hoping for the stars to align myself. 🙂
lhuff
September 22, 2009
@Elizabeth: I hope to be sharing more as the year progresses. Those days of star alignment keep us going!
Meanwhile, I keep dancing
September 27, 2009
A great resource to push kids into thinking about word choice, style, etc. is _Voice Lessons_ by Nancy Dean.
Emily Nelson
October 27, 2010
Thanks for sharing! This is a really smart way to teach tone. I might give this idea a shot with my Sophomore English class. 🙂
scorecast
January 21, 2012
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justread
January 21, 2012
@scorecast: I’m glad you found it helpful. It’s thrilling to me to know something I wrote a few years back can still help others. How cool is that!