Voice, Word Choice and Message

In Writer's Workshop, we are working on developing a few of the 6 traits of writing that we are scored on multiple times per year as well as on the report cards.

For our Memoir writing piece, we are focusing on Voice, Word Choice, and Message.  There are three areas that greatly enhance the interest of our stories and add great detail.

We are breaking these three skills apart and focusing on one per day this week. We are done with the first draft of our Memoirs (5 paragraphs total) and are now going through them, hunting for each skill.

Today we hunted for Voice.  When I first taught the 5th graders about Voice, I used the song "You've Got a Friend".  We listened to three versions of the song and discussed the differences we noticed in each.  The way we thought the singer was feeling and how they sang is voice! This lesson went better than I could have hoped for.  Every student was focused and listening to the singer so carefully. The image below are the words that came to mind when students were listening.

The 5th graders did a fantastic job noticing the voice in the songs and were able to then understand what voice means for their own writing.

We took time today to go through our Memoir drafts and highlight all of the voice in their pieces. They were given a hand out that states voice is noticed through a writers use of; dialogue, inner thought, and font style.

WOW! I was impressed by all the voice student's found in their drafts.  (Photos to come)



My 5th graders are looking forward to hunting for word choice and message this week.