Mood and Tone using Frozen videos

Over the past few weeks, my class has been reading novels with Multiple Perspectives.  I've been reviewing some basic story elements, and then trying to tie in some heftier topics with Mood and Tone.





We focused on these tricky elements last week.  I used a lot of videos to get my students to recognize that the mood is set by the reader, and the tone is set by the writer.  One of the lessons we really liked was watching a Mary Popping video, and then watching "the flip side" or Scary Mary.  I first taught this lesson last year and used these two videos:   

This is the original trailer from 1964.
We discussed the mood and tone that was created by the scenes the wrtiers chose, along with the music that was played.  Next I showed my students this video:


SCARY MARY!

I thought it was pretty cool, that someone had created the same idea with Disney's Frozen.  This movie was so popular this year.  Even though they are older, my smarties love to "hate" this movie.
So, if you are trying to get this difficult point across, you can also use these videos:


and then the SCARY Frozen version
Do you want to build a snowman?  I love that line.
To do a quick formative, and see if my students "GOT IT,"
I had them figure out the mood and tone of their novels and write a summary paragraph.  Then, I asked them to FLIP IT and find a section of text that they could use to portray a totally different mood and tone.
It was really cool to read and listen to their paragraphs.
They loved this idea, and I would LOVE a few more ideas for teaching mood and tone.  Share your thoughts!

8 comments

  1. I don't teach literacy, but I love this!! Pinning in just in case. :)

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  2. I thought that mood and tone were the same thing LOL! Pinning in case I ever teach ELA again :)

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  3. Mood and tone are two of the hardest concepts for me to teach. I absolutely love your idea of using these videos. I am pinning this to (definitely) use next year. Thank you!

    Mary
    Fit to be Fourth

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  4. LOVE this! What a great way to teach these two rather difficult concepts!
    Rachel
    A Tall Drink of Water

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  5. What grades could you do this with?

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  6. This is awesome! Although I'm worried that it's too scary for my fifth graders. What grades have you presented this to? Thanks!

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  7. I teach middle school and my kids are loving this lesson! It's really helping them with the words that we choose for mood and tone in poetry as well! Thanks for sharing!

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  8. I don't understand what you did with the videos. Would you explain how you used them? Give an example.

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