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Teaching Tone in the Secondary English Classroom




I like to introduce students to tone by having them fill out a copy of my tone doodle notes. Example:
                                                  

After they complete their doodles notes I move on to one of my favorite lessons! 

I discovered a new way of teaching tone this last year that I absolutely love and the kids really GET. I went to Goodwill and I purchased about 5-10 young adult books for next to nothing. The next day in class, I gave each student a page from one of the books. I then had my students read their page and circle emotion words or words that would cause an emotion (such as hitting). The students were to look only at the words they circled and use them to determine the tone of their book page. They then had to color their book page to exemplify this tone. 

The kids really loved this activity and I even had kids ask to take extra book pages home to do more!

Once everyone was finished I attached their book pages to a piece of bulletin board paper, numbered each one, and placed the entire thing in the hallway.  During class, I made one of my students learning group stations to go in the hall and identify 10 of the book page tones. 

Examples:





Products that include this tone finding technique include:
    
       




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