Vote on Tone: Constructing Meaning from a Text

Reading is complicated, and learning to read involves all sorts of mental activities.  Today, I'm looking at one way to engage in one of Braunger & Lewis's (2008) thirteen core understandings about reading using I Want my Hat Back by Jon Klassen.

1. Reading is a construction of meaning from a text. It is an active, cognitive, and affective process.

What it means: when people read, they decide that the text means something. In order to get to what they feel a text means, people have to actively think, and their moods, feelings, and attitudes impact what people decide the text means. This understanding points out the importance of students having the chance to think and talk about their comprehension of what they read.

One way to use this idea is to have a vote on tone: hand out cards with different emotions on them, like happy, sad, angry, confused. Pick a page (I like the page that says, "I HAVE SEEN MY HAT."), and have each student read the sentence with a tone that shows the emotion that they picked. Have the students vote for which emotion is 'right.' After tallying the votes, have a discussion about how they knew which emotion was right. What happened in the book that made them pick the emotion that they picked?

An important point to the game is that there are a lot of emotions that fit this text. The bear could be sad, angry, or confused. As long as the voters can back up their vote with ideas from the text, they're right.

Braunger, J. & Lewis, J.P. (2008). What we know about the learning and development of reading K-12: Thirteen core understandings about reading and learning to read. In S.B. Kucer (Ed.), What research really says about teaching and learning to read. Urbana, IL: NCTE.