In response to teaching students voice, I find it very common that students struggle with voice, especially in nonfiction writing. Portalupi and Fletcher (1998, 2001) provide examples in how to teach voice in both Craft Lessons and Nonfiction Craft Lessons. Some books they use to model voice are Wolves by Seymour Simon, Ill Fix Anthony by Judith Viorst, The Friend by John Burningham, and My Five Senses by Aliki. In addition, here is an example that they recommend to teach voice.
Have them partner up, and spend five minutes talking about your topic. Encourage them to share anything they want, and talk about what they find most interesting and surprising. The partner will listen and maybe ask questions to encourage them to talk more. While the students are talking, circulate the room and jot down a few of their comments and transfer them to chart paper. After 10 minutes, share the chart paper with the students and point out the language they used to talk about their topics. Compare the way they talked about their topics with the way they wrote about their topics. Ask, which would you rather listen to? Which would be more interesting for a reader? Then conclude by saying, when you write today, trying writing about your facts in the same kind of voice you might use if you were talking to a friend. I hope this helps! _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
