Home School Writing Cooperative

Week Five - Voice:

The voice is the heart and soul, the magic, the will, along with the feeling and conviction of the individual writer coming out through the words. Voice is the personality of the writer coming through on the page. It is what gives the writing a sense of flavor, uniqueness, and give the reader the feeling that the writer is talking directly to her. A strong sense of voice demands that the writer make a commitment to the writing and write honestly with conviction. In a paper with strong voice, the reader will get a sense that someone real is there on the page, whether the reader knows the writer or not.

• Read the paper all the way through.
• Read the criteria item and enter Y for Yes, N for No, and S for Sort of.
• Mark your score in the space provided.
• Give 1 point for each Y, 1/2 point for each S and 0 points for each N
  

___ ___ The text has personality.

___ ___ I want the reader to feel what I feel.

___ ___ It's obvious that I find this topic interesting.

___ ___ I want you to read and feel something.

___ ___ You can tell I thinking about the audience.

1) Place the passage (poem from Langston Hughes or Rudy Bridges autobiography excerpt) on the overhead/ board and have a student read it aloud. Ask for opinions about the piece--what did they think about the writing, specifically its voice? See if they can come up with single word descriptions of the voice in this piece-exciting? Interesting? Emotional? Personal? Engaging? Sincere? What questions come to mind--who? What? When? Where? Why? How?--as they look at this writing? If they don't have a lot of questions, discuss its strengths.

2) With a partner, have students discuss the criteria for strong voice and rewrite the passage, attempting to "voice it down." Their goal is to earn a "1" in voice for this piece.

3) Reread the original "voice-rich" writing, and then have the groups share aloud their new "voiceless" versions.

4) Talk about what was added or changed to take out the voice.

Homework Week Five

Students will write a five paragraph Persuasive essay uniting their interest and other discipline such as science, history, etc. Student will present topic to teacher orally first.

Back to Curriculum Page