Voice

Voice is the author’s fingerprint on the page.  By using voice the reader feels more in touch with the writer’s emotions, opinions, and personality.  Voice is a favorite trait of students.  They love to read books with lots of voice which in turn carries over to their writing.
 

• Use two contrasting artistic pieces have students use a Venn diagram to describe the similarities and differences.  Write a few sentences about the voice of the pieces.  Discuss as a class.

•  Read two pieces of writing, one containing lots of voice the other having weak voice.  Have the students identify the strong voice piece and the weak voice piece.  Have students talk about the two pieces in terms of likeability and voice.

• Have students write a persuasive piece using voice.  Have them chose a topic that is near and dear to their hearts.  Put these pieces into a class book entitled, Let us Persuade You.

• Have students sit in a circle on the ground start the game by having students close their eyes.  Have one student be 'it' and chose one person to touch gently on the head.  This will give the signal to that student to share  their 'I love/hate statement'.  Have others guess who is talking.  Continue this game until everyone has had a turn.  After the game talk about how voices were easy or hard to recognize.  Discuss how the voice was one clue to the person but the statement was another big clue.  Many times the student would have been recognized by statement alone.

• After reading one of the voice picture books have the students form some opinions of the author.  Ask the students to describe the author and draw a picture of him/her.  Use sections of the book to back up students' opinions.

• After reading many voice picture books have students make a list of other words that describe voice.  (angry, passionate, loving, hate, charming, thoughtful, kind)  Post this as a wall poster for students to reference, Voice is...

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