This Lesson's Title:

Same Setting, Different Moods

voice and word choices bring mood to places and times

This lesson was proposed for WritingFix by NNWP Teacher Consultant Tamara Turnbeaugh.

The ideal "mentor text" that can be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 3 of the book.

Click here to view this book at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources:

Pre-step (before you share the published model): First you might want to have a conversation with your students about setting and mood. Describe a few settings and ask students how those make them feel. Or try listing emotions and having students associate those with a setting.

Then, using the upper half of the first pre-writing worksheet below, have students choose an easily accessible mood (like sadness) and individually brainstorm words associated with that emotion. If you were sad, what verbs might you use? Sulked, scowled, moped… What adjectives would describe you? Blue, gloomy, gray…Personally, what do you think of when you think of sadness? Grandma’s death, a fight with a friend…..

Step one (sharing the published model):  Once students understand they will be linking mood and setting with word choices, read the first part of chapter 3 of Lord of the Flies—stop once you get to the dialogue.  On the overhead, together as a class, fill in the second pre-writing worksheet below with words and phrases from the text that give clues about the mood in Jack’s jungle: Semi-darkness, frustration, mad, oppressive, harsh cry, hiss, furtive… Skip the dialogue section and read again where Simon comes in. In this last section of the chapter, Simon goes into the jungle alone and sees a totally different jungle than Jack.  Again, use the graphic organizer to look for mood clues through words and phrases:  Flowers, fruit, sunlight, aromatic bushes, gaudy butterflies, danced, honey-colored, rose delicately…

Step two (introducing student models of writing):  In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson.  The groups will certainly talk about the voice, because of the post-it note that has been embedded on each model.  You might prompt your students to talk about each model's word choice as well.

• Three high school writers share their moody settings
• We're still looking for additional student samples for middle school and high school for this prompt!  Help us publish your students, and we'll send you free books for your classroom!  Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.

Step three (thinking and pre-writing): After you’ve read and discussed Golding's setting and the student samples, tell your writers they will be creating an original character in a individually-chosen setting today, and they will attempt to create a mood as they describe.  If possible, let students play with the interactive buttons on the Student Instructions Page, or you can write some of the choices on the chalk or white board for them to choose from. Require students to individually pre-write for a new setting, using the bottom half of their graphic organizers.  When they write their stories, you might let them choose either the top half or the bottom half of their graphic organizer as their inspiration. Extension idea for this assignment:  Golding describes one setting from two different characters' perspectives; the mood established for each character is different.  After your students describe their personally-chosen setting from one character's perspective, might they do a second description of the same place and set a different mood?

• List of tone and mood words fo students' writers notebooks
• Pre-writing worksheet to be used in the pre-step of this lesson
• Pre-writing worksheet to be used in the step one of this lesson

Step four (revising with specific trait language):   To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts.  Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5."   Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings.  For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

• Sheet of 6 Voice Post-It Notes
• Sheet of 6 Word Choice Post-It Notes

Step six (publishing for the portfolio):   When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block.  Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here.  Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.

Interested in publishing student work on-line?  We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers.  This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.

Play the on-line Lord of the Flies game by clicking here.