2.5.08: Trying on character, making a mood

Title: Trying on character, making a mood, setting the tone

Author: M. Hill

Subject: ELA

Grade: 6

Week:

Unit/Lesson Plan #:

Unit theme: Adaptation to the Environment

Textbook references:

Learning objectives:

- To explore how point-of-view and writing voice influences tone

- To explore how setting influences mood 

Key Questions, Concepts, or Themes:

 How does writing change with a different tone?

How does tone influence mood? 

Stage 1:

Journal Warm-Up: Try on a character that could feasibly be a CSS student.

Stage 2:

Have students close their eyes.  Prompt them to imagine a natural setting - somewhere far away from the city.  It can be somewhere they have been, or somewhere they would like to go.  They will place themselves in that setting and imagine the world around them.  What do they see?  Hear? Smell? Taste? Touch?  What is the climate like?  What is the land like? (tie to geography unit).  

Stage 3:

  Students will write a descriptive paragraph (or two!) about their setting, and then some.  The goal here is to describe it from an objective perspective, as if they are a National Geographic narrating voice on an informative program.

Homework: Students will need to put a character in their setting and describe the setting again, this time from the point of view of their character. The goal is to think about how the character might respond to a setting.  How would they feel about it?  How might the description change?  An easy way to understand how to use the character's point of view is to write a journal entry or letter from the voice of the character [used as brainstorming for later short story writing]

Assessments: (attach/link copies)

_x_ Group assessment

__x Observation of process/student work

__ Self-assessment by student

_x_ Teacher generated assignment

_x_ Written project

__ Test/Quiz

__ Other: ____________________________________