Elizabeth A. Johnson
The mark of progressive urban education is to ground student work in a relevant, rigorous, community-conscious, and engaging way. One strategy to address the skill of evaluating tone is to bring students a collection of newspapers, fliers, newsletters, church pamphlets, obituaries, horoscopes, magazines, and any other community publications. These could also be brought in by the students. "Community" could be broadly defined as the African American Community, the Latino Community, Newcomers to the U.S., the Congregational Church Community, the Future Teachers of American Community, the Service Learning Community, or any other group of which students are a part. This could also include a states-wide community as many students are transient.
From these publications, model how to choose "important words" that will be called "strands." Words in a strand will give a cohesive meaning. For example, a horoscope with "future" "beware" "rocky" and "look out for" would clearly give a tone of caution or weariness. After sufficient models for your students, allow them to dive into their own choices of publications. It will be helpful to students to be provided with a list of 100-150 "tone" words. Without a list, students are often stuck at "happy," "sad," "upset," and other broad words. With a list, they are able to pick out appropriate words that they do not commonly associate with a feeling or are unlikely to come up with on their own.
Depending on your preference, students can compile these words into strands on their own on worksheets, or you could create a student-centered board in the classroom, beginning with charts of "text evidence" words leading to "tone words." The relationship between evidence and tone will be used in the final journal response.
The first step is looking at voice by exploring tone. In the examples below, students only need to know key words to infer the tone. This tone from Tybalt may be threatening and frightful. When Capulet speaks though, the tone turns to conflicting and challenging.
•TYBALT Act I, scene v
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Now, by the stock and honor of my kin,
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To strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.
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•CAPULET
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Content thee, gentle coz.
Other language contains punctuation to give meaning. For example, when Romeo is questioning his recollection of past experiences in his final soliloquy, he asks several questions of himself, then of Juliet, and then of fate. A series of question marks alone could show conviction or a confusing, puzzled, challenging, passionate, angry, or worried tone.
•ROMEO Act V
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Said he not so? Or did I dream it so?
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Why art thou yet so fair? …to be his paramour?
To close the lesson, give students one more line, possibly from a scene you read already but with which you did not already assess tone. Ask students to find a strand and give two to three tone words to describe it on paper. This could easily be worked into a worksheet for the lesson.