Checking in to share some of the stuff I’ve been doing in my classroom. Today we learned about mood and tone. This is always a difficult concept for students to grasp. I feel like every English teacher teaches it and the students then forget it.every.year.
Last year I came up with a special hand motion trick for how to get students to remember mood and tone.
MOOD= MOVES (how it moves you)- Wiggle your arms
TONE= TELL (how the narrator tells it)- Put hands to mouth in a megaphone style.
The students laugh at me wiggling my arms around and think it’s goofy. Hand motions and auditory techniques really work for memory so I am hoping it gets them to remember it a little better. I also made an anchor chart so they can reference it in the classroom when I ask them what the tone/mood of a particular piece is.
The purpose of an anchor chart is to give the students the support they need while learning a concept. They might know what mood is but struggle coming up with a word to describe it. All year they can look on this chart. Then when they get to the test *hopefully* one will pop in their heads.
Character Trait Anchor Chart
Another thing students struggle with is finding words to describe characters. I need students to come up with words other than “happy” and “sad” to describe a character. So after a lesson the other day where students were having trouble thinking of words, I made this to hang up:
I separated the words into “positive” words (happy face) and negative words (sad face).
Hopefully this helps students think of some better 8th grade words to use when describing characters.
What are some useful anchor charts you have in your classroom?
Pencils and Pancakes 
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