09.11 - Tone and Diction

We started today's class with a discussion of tone and diction. We defined these terms as follows:

Tone refers to the author’s attitude towards their subject. (Feeling)

Diction refers to an author’s choice of words and how those words are spoken.

(Word Choice)

We then played a game I invented called "Creeper or Keeper."

That's Kreacher as The Creeper and Keifer as The Keeper

In this game, we listened to a love song and then analyzed the speaker's tone and diction to determine whether or not s/he was a creeper (a sketchy person with whom to have a relationship) or a keeper (someone to keep around in a relationship, a real catch).

The song we listened to today was "Every Breath You Take" by The Police.

Click the song title for lyrics (video and song below).

Everyone responded to the following prompt in their writer's journal:

Is the speaker of this song, a creeper or a keeper?

Explain your response by referring to and quoting specific parts of the song.

After everyone had a chance to respond to this prompt, we discussed students' answers. We kept track of opinions and analyses by annotating the song with the SMART board. Our annotations were as follows:

(click image to enlarge)

In the end, ten people decided that the speaker was a creeper, two people were undecided, and no one thought the speaker was a keeper. We'll play again tomorrow with a new song.

As our final activity in class, everyone opened up to the passage from Night that they felt was really powerful. We talked a bit about how a powerful passage meant a strong tone and then everyone wrote their quote in large print on a piece of paper which was posted on the wall.

We will work with people's quotes from Night tomorrow in class.

Homework:

Continue to read in Night according to the class reading schedule.

When you come across a new fact / piece of information / perspective, summarize it on a sticky note and put the note in your book.