Tone of Just Being

Tone is a tough concept to teach, sometimes because it is taught with mood but more often because the texts are not written for youth or made to connect to lives of youth. When we ask about the tone of the piece, we are asking readers to decipher how the writer feels about or positions themselves within a specific and/or general experience.

To Prepare

This lesson focuses on Just Being, but you can choose any theme. Copy three or more texts from each of the forms – poetry, fiction, and essay. Sharing a variety of forms is key. There is a digital version online, but you can also scan pages of the book and share it with students via the learning management system (Canvas, Google Classroom). If you have printers in your school, you can make a copy for each student to tape into their notebook.

Launch the Lesson

Start with a write-in. Project three options on the white-board or overhead project for students to select from (or make these available on your learning management system). A note about these write-ins, students should feel free to reject the prompts or develop their own during the writing time. For this prompt focused on place and where we are from, here are a few suggestions:

Informational: Create a pie chart of how you spend your day or week. Create categories (e.g., sleep, school, work, video games, social media, etc.). Add a legend or label each section. If there is time, write about each slice of the pie.

Argument: I am most my Self when I am X (name a place or activity). First, define Self.: On one hand, I am most myself when … On the other hand, I am also myself when…. However, if I had to choose, I’d say…

Narrative: Get ready with me. Take us into the way you “get ready” in the morning or for some activity that you do (e.g., preparing for a video game session, pre-game sport ritual, setting up a place to read or do homework).

Reading from Just YA

Distribute the selected texts or direct students to the Just Being section of the anthology. Independently or in pairs, give students some time to read one or two of the pieces. In partners or small groups ask students to talk about this: What is the author trying to say about “being”? Ask a few students to then share out whole class.

Next, students will explore the idea of “tone,” in their writing. One way to define tone is as the “attitude the author has toward their subject.” Provide students with some tone words. You may want to give them a list of “tone words” like this one, or a shorter modified list (accepting, amused, angry, anxious, bitter, confident, enthusiastic, fond, happy, guilty, indifferent, ironic, joyful, loving, melancholy, nostalgic, proud, poignant, reflective, silly, touchy, upset, vexed, serious, silly).

You may select a poem and read it together first, modeling this process as a think aloud first. In the modeling, focus on this move: What makes you say so? This move is a way of generating text support but also interpretation.Model and invite answers to these questions “How does this author feel about X?’ and “how do you know?”

Get Moving: Tonal Gallery Walk

Now, ask students to return to their selected text. Ideally, you would have physical copies of this and can tape them to the wall, but having a digital copy at desks is fine. Give students four sticky notes.

Ask students to provide a one word answer to the question: How does the author feel about the topic in their text? They can put that one sticky note on the back of the text or paper, or set it aside in a notebook so it is not visible to others.

Next, be sure students have three more sticky notes. Tell students to get up and moving to their peers’ selected texts. They should find three other texts that their peers selected. Moving around the room, they should read the text and then add a sticky note answering this question: How does this writer feel about their topic? How do you know? Repeat this two more times.

Now students should return to their original selected text and look at the four sticky notes. They should reflect on this range of words, perhaps go to a thesaurus to consider the nuance of these words and consider which seem closest to the author’s attitude toward their topic. What accounts for the different readings of tone? Why does it matter that we consider the author’s tone as we read? Why does it matter for us as writers to consider how readers interpret our writing?

Closure

Finally, encourage students to return to their write-in and name the tone of their own writing. Consider, in a pair-share, repeating this sticky note exercise with student writing and give students time to revise their writing if the peer’s tone words conflict with the student-writer’s intentions. Give them time to revise their papers based on the feedback they received. Are there words or lines they want to take out, change, or add in order to convey the tone they want to?

Note: This strategy was adapted from The National Writing Project’s lesson on tone in Coach.Teach.Write.