The beauty of a poem is lost without an understanding of its tone. Middle schoolers connect author's purpose and word choice to four poems in a literary analysis activity, which prompts them to note each poem's tone and meaning.

Words carry baggage. In addition to their literal, denotative meaning, words also carry the weight of the associations and connotations attached to the word—the connotations of words writers use to create the tone of a piece. An...

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Find the central idea in an excerpt from Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" with a literary analysis lesson. As your class analyzes a section of the story, they determine how the author forms the central idea...

Three of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I like to see it," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "We grow accustomed to the Dark," provide instructors with an opportunity to model for class members how to use close reading strategies to...

The classroom might not be the best place for informal language, but it's a great place to teach middle and high schoolers how to identify the correct language register for their audience. A short lesson on formal and informal language...

Focus on chapter two of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a questioning activity. After teaching and modeling several types of questions, learners work with partners and then independently to answer and...

An informative installment of the Writing for Specific Fields series helps readers learn how to interpret and write about fiction. The website details nine easy steps for writing a literary analysis—a useful method for all readers!

How does an author sequence events in a narrative so that the events build on one another and create a tone of mystery, growth, or resolution? As part of a study of narrative writing, class members work in pairs to examine the techniques...

The key idea in this interactive exercise designed for high schoolers is that figurative language, especially similes, and metaphors, add layers of meaning to a text. Users examine examples from speeches, ads, movie dialogue, and poems,...

This lesson will help students identify diction and tone in their reading and will help them answer these questions: What does the author mean? What is the author's attitude about what he or she is writing? How will my understanding of a...

This learning module provides remediation and extra practice with identifying an author's tone. Reinforcement for understanding author's tone is provided through the five different worksheets and a mini-lesson. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.4

This lesson focuses on understanding an article or essay by looking past mere words on a page to the choice and arrangement of those words in order to analyze the way writers express themselves. The choice and arrangement of words make...

This lesson features several weather videos, both real and created, to help students understand how information and the tone changes based on the audiences and the purposes for the presentation.

Explore the difference between tone and mood in this animated video [2:28] from WNET through definitions and examples from poetry and prose. Discussion questions below help students to further apply their understanding before analyzing a...