My classes learned about tone and mood for six days nearly two weeks ago. We learned

1. Tone is the author’s attitude towards the audience, the subject and the character. Tone is shown through dialogue (talking) and descriptions (author’s word choice). When I discussed tone, I always pointed to my head to indicate the author’s thoughts.
2. Mood is the feeling the reader gets from a story, poem, passage, video, etc. Mood is shown through setting (location) and atmosphere (everything in the the setting). Since I had a little hand movement for tone, I had to have one for mood! Mood was simply two hands in the shape of  a heart over the heart.

We started off watching a series of videos and writing down the tone and mood for each video. First up was the original 1964 Mary Poppins trailer. Ohhhh, everyone made fun of the “old-school” Mary Poppins graphics and special effects. We noted words like pride, sparkling new motion picture, the world’s most delightful heroine, and magical and wondrous ways transform each member of the family. We took a look at this handout I created to determine the author’s tone. Students discussed in pairs which words best described the author’s tone, and they came up with optimistic, cheerful, and informal. We also spent some time discussing mood (light-hearted, humorous, and warm).

After watching the original Mary Poppins trailer, we watched Scary Mary trailer. THAT one definitely got everyone’s attention! Nearly everyone pointed out that the author’s word choice helped them to determine the tone, while the atmosphere helped determine the mood.

When students had some free time, they were able to access my Blendspace account to watch a few more videos on their own and write down the tone and mood for each video and explain how they determined the tone and mood.

Students also added an easy drawing to our notebooks, and wrote the definition for tone and mood in their own words.

After analyzing several passages and excerpts, my first period class was given an assignment that required them to read an excerpt from a book, box words that helped them to determine the author’s tone, and then draw a picture over the words to help explain the mood. Finally, they had to answer three questions about tone, mood, and their drawing.

Going forward:

• Students will analyze tone and mood in poetry and literature.
• Students will explain how figurative language plays a major role in tone.
• Students will write paragraphs and essays that analyze the author’s tone.

Next year:

• Teach author’s tone and reader’s mood earlier in the year and complete short projects about author’s tone throughout the year.