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English lesson plan · 7th grade (Year 8 in England) · 45 minutes

Tone and mood

Reading Comprehension

CCSS RL.7.4CCSS RI.8.4England: KS3 ReadingEngland: GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q2

Objective and success criteria

Students will: Tone and mood.

  • I can answer questions on today's skill on my own, without help.
  • I can explain each step and say why it works.
  • I can check my answer and spot a mistake.

Before and after

Needs first: Making inferences

Leads to: Analysing language for effect; Foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhanger and red herring; Explaining the effect of a technique (GCSE)

Materials: A short text or extract (one copy each), Highlighters, Question cards, Mini whiteboards, A short model text on the board, Printed student sheet (below).

Warm-up · 5 min

  • Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Making inferences). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
  • Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.
  1. The house was silent. Dust covered the furniture, and cobwebs hung from every corner. What can you infer about the house? (It is brand new. / A party is happening. / Nobody has lived there for a long time. / It was cleaned this morning.) → Nobody has lived there for a long time.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  2. Tariq stared at his test paper, then crumpled it up and pushed it to the bottom of his bag before his dad could see. What can you infer about the test? (Tariq's dad wrote the test. / The test was cancelled. / Tariq got full marks. / Tariq did not do well.) → Tariq did not do well.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.
  3. The coach blew the whistle, and the players trudged off the field, heads down, while the other team cheered. What can you infer? (The players lost the match. / The match was cancelled. / The players won. / The players are going to start playing.) → The players lost the match.Prompt: The answer is not written word for word. Look for clues.

Hook · 5 min

  • Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
  • Share the objective: Tone and mood. Read the success criteria together.

I do: model it · 10 min

  • Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
  • Example: The empty swing creaked in the wind. Grey rain fell on the abandoned playground, and the last leaves dropped from the trees. What is the mood?
  • Step 1: Tone is the writer's attitude; mood is the feeling created for the reader.
  • Step 2: So the answer is: melancholy (sad and lonely)
  • Answer: melancholy (sad and lonely)
  • Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

We do: guided practice · 10 min

  • Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
  • Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.
  1. We must act now. Every day we wait, another species disappears forever. This is not a problem for tomorrow. What is the writer's tone? (humorous / uncertain / urgent / relaxed) → urgentPrompt: What feeling do the word choices create?
  2. Sunlight spilled across the meadow, bees hummed lazily among the clover, and somewhere a child was laughing. What is the mood? (angry / gloomy / threatening / peaceful and happy) → peaceful and happyPrompt: What feeling do the word choices create?

You do: independent practice · 10 min

  • Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
  • Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 8 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 5 min

  • Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.
  1. The empty swing creaked in the wind. Grey rain fell on the abandoned playground, and the last leaves dropped from the trees. What is the mood? (melancholy (sad and lonely) / playful / joyful / exciting) → melancholy (sad and lonely)Prompt: What feeling do the word choices create?

Watch out for

  • Answering from memory or opinion instead of evidence in the text.
  • Copying a long quote without explaining what it shows.

Support and stretch

Support

  • Review first: Making inferences.
  • Use concrete materials: a short text or extract (one copy each).
  • Give the first step of each question, or a partly worked example to finish.
  • Pair with a confident partner for the guided practice.

Stretch

  • Move on to: Analysing language for effect; Foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhanger and red herring; Explaining the effect of a technique (GCSE).
  • Explain a common mistake in writing and how to fix it.
  • Write a word problem that uses today's skill, then solve a partner's.

Homework and more practice

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-7.

Free lesson plan from eurekami.com/lesson-plan-builder

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Tone and mood

Name

Date

Score/ 8

Rethinking Screen Time

Few debates generate as much anxiety among parents as the question of screen time. Headlines warn that smartphones are "destroying a generation", while technology companies insist that their products connect and empower young people. The truth, as so often, is more complicated than either side admits. Part of the problem is that "screen time" is a crude measure. An hour spent video-calling a grandparent, coding a game or researching a school project is not the same as an hour spent scrolling through an endless feed of short videos. Researchers increasingly argue that what young people do on screens matters more than how long they spend on them. That said, quantity is not irrelevant. Several large studies have linked very heavy use – more than five or six hours a day of recreational screen time – to poorer sleep and lower wellbeing. Screens can displace other activities that support health: exercise, face-to-face friendship and, crucially, sleep. Light from devices and the stimulation of social media late at night can delay sleep for teenagers, whose body clocks already push them towards later bedtimes. It is worth noting, however, that most of these studies show correlation, not causation. Teenagers who are already unhappy may turn to their phones more, rather than their phones making them unhappy. Untangling cause and effect is notoriously difficult. What, then, should families do? Rather than fixating on a single number, experts suggest asking three questions. Is screen use getting in the way of sleep? Is it crowding out exercise and real-world relationships? And does the young person feel in control of it, or controlled by it? If the answers are reassuring, the exact number of minutes may matter less than we fear.

  1. Question 1

    Read "Rethinking Screen Time". Which word best describes the writer's tone?

    • A. indifferent
    • B. sarcastic
    • C. alarmist
    • D. balanced

Two Views on Zoos

TEXT A – "A Lifeline for Wildlife" Modern zoos are not the cramped menageries of the past. The best of them are centres for conservation, research and education. Breeding programmes in zoos have helped save species such as the Arabian oryx and the California condor from extinction, and some animals bred in zoos have been successfully returned to the wild. For millions of children who will never visit a rainforest or a savannah, seeing a living animal up close can spark a lifelong love of nature. Closing zoos would not free animals; it would abandon them. TEXT B – "Wild at Heart" No enclosure, however large, can replace a wild home. An elephant may walk dozens of kilometres a day in the wild; in a zoo, it may cover a fraction of that, and some show repetitive swaying or pacing that scientists link to stress. While a few breeding programmes have succeeded, most animals in zoos belong to species that are not endangered at all. If we truly want to protect wildlife, our money would do far more good protecting habitats where animals already live.

  1. Question 2

    Read "Two Views on Zoos". What does the phrase "it would abandon them" suggest in Text A?

    • A. Children would stop visiting.
    • B. Zoos are like prisons.
    • C. Closing zoos would leave animals without care or protection.
    • D. Animals want to leave zoos.

  1. Question 3

    Sunlight spilled across the meadow, bees hummed lazily among the clover, and somewhere a child was laughing. What is the mood?

    • A. angry
    • B. threatening
    • C. peaceful and happy
    • D. gloomy

Speech: Our Beach, Our Responsibility

Good morning, everyone. Last Saturday, twenty-three pupils from this school spent three hours on Sandy Bay beach. We collected forty-one bags of rubbish. Forty-one. Bottles, crisp packets, fishing line, a shoe, and – I promise you this is true – an entire garden chair. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. "It's not my rubbish. Why should I pick it up?" And you're right: most of us didn't drop it. But here's the thing. The seal pup that gets tangled in that fishing line doesn't care whose fault it was. The toddler who cuts her foot on broken glass doesn't care either. That beach belongs to all of us. We swim there in summer. We walk our dogs there in winter. Some of us learned to ride our bikes on the promenade. If it belongs to all of us, then looking after it belongs to all of us too. So I'm asking you for just one thing. Not money. Not your whole weekend. Just two hours, on the first Saturday of next month. Bring gloves, bring a friend, bring your little brother if you have to. Because if twenty-three of us can fill forty-one bags, imagine what four hundred of us could do. Thank you.

  1. Question 4

    Read "Speech: Our Beach, Our Responsibility". Why does the speaker repeat "Forty-one" on its own?

    • A. to emphasise how much rubbish there was
    • B. because she made a counting mistake
    • C. to show she is unsure
    • D. to tell a joke

The Attic

The attic door had been painted shut for as long as Daniel could remember. His mother said there was nothing up there but dust and old suitcases. So when the decorators scraped away the paint on the first Saturday of the summer holidays, Daniel was the first one up the narrow stairs. The air was thick and warm and smelt of mothballs. Thin blades of light slid through gaps in the roof tiles and lay across the floorboards like fallen swords. In the far corner, beneath a sheet greyed with age, something waited. Daniel crossed the room slowly. Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken. He reached out, hesitated, then pulled the sheet away in one quick movement. It was a desk – small, battered, and covered in carvings. Initials. Dates. A crooked drawing of a sailing boat. And there, in the corner, carved more deeply than all the rest, were three letters he knew better than his own name: D.A.M. Daniel Adebayo Mensah. His grandfather. The grandfather who had died two years before Daniel was born, and whom his mother never spoke about. He ran his fingers over the letters. Downstairs, someone switched on a radio, and a burst of music floated up through the floor. Daniel did not move. For the first time, the silence in the attic did not feel empty. It felt like someone waiting to tell him a story.

  1. Question 5

    Read "The Attic". What mood does the writer create in paragraphs 2 and 3?

    • A. mysterious and tense
    • B. angry
    • C. bored and dull
    • D. light-hearted and comic

  2. Question 6

    Read "The Attic". "Thin blades of light…lay across the floorboards like fallen swords." What effect does this simile create?

    • A. It makes the attic feel cheerful.
    • B. It tells us there are weapons in the attic.
    • C. It makes the attic feel dramatic and slightly threatening.
    • D. It shows the attic is brightly lit.

The Margin

Zainab had read the library book three times before she noticed the handwriting. It was in the margin of page 112, so faint she had taken it for a smudge. In tiny, slanted letters, someone had written: "Don't trust the narrator." Underneath, in different ink and a rounder hand, someone else had replied: "Why not?" And beneath that, in the first writer's slant: "Read chapter 9 again." She read chapter 9 again. Then she read it a fourth time, and a fifth, and on the sixth she saw it – a single sentence where the narrator claimed to have been at home when, three chapters earlier, he had described himself on a train. A lie, hidden in plain sight. The whole story tilted, like a picture knocked crooked on a wall. Zainab sat back. She checked the date stamps on the card inside the front cover. The book had been borrowed forty-seven times since 1994. Somewhere among those forty-seven readers were two people who had held a conversation across years without ever meeting. She found a pencil. For a long time she hesitated over the page, feeling as if she were about to speak in a room full of strangers. Then, carefully, beneath the other two, she wrote: "Found it. Thank you." When she returned the book, the librarian frowned at the pencil marks. Zainab apologised. But as she walked home, she wondered who would be next to find them.

  1. Question 7

    Read "The Margin". "The whole story tilted, like a picture knocked crooked on a wall." What does this simile show?

    • A. She felt dizzy and ill.
    • B. The library was badly decorated.
    • C. Her understanding of the story suddenly shifted.
    • D. The book fell off the shelf.

The Attic

The attic door had been painted shut for as long as Daniel could remember. His mother said there was nothing up there but dust and old suitcases. So when the decorators scraped away the paint on the first Saturday of the summer holidays, Daniel was the first one up the narrow stairs. The air was thick and warm and smelt of mothballs. Thin blades of light slid through gaps in the roof tiles and lay across the floorboards like fallen swords. In the far corner, beneath a sheet greyed with age, something waited. Daniel crossed the room slowly. Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken. He reached out, hesitated, then pulled the sheet away in one quick movement. It was a desk – small, battered, and covered in carvings. Initials. Dates. A crooked drawing of a sailing boat. And there, in the corner, carved more deeply than all the rest, were three letters he knew better than his own name: D.A.M. Daniel Adebayo Mensah. His grandfather. The grandfather who had died two years before Daniel was born, and whom his mother never spoke about. He ran his fingers over the letters. Downstairs, someone switched on a radio, and a burst of music floated up through the floor. Daniel did not move. For the first time, the silence in the attic did not feel empty. It felt like someone waiting to tell him a story.

  1. Question 8

    Read "The Attic". "Each board groaned beneath him as if complaining about being woken." Which technique is used?

    • A. personification
    • B. alliteration
    • C. onomatopoeia only
    • D. hyperbole

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Answer key: Tone and mood

  1. 1. D. balanced

  2. 2. C. Closing zoos would leave animals without care or protection.

  3. 3. C. peaceful and happy

  4. 4. A. to emphasise how much rubbish there was

  5. 5. A. mysterious and tense

  6. 6. C. It makes the attic feel dramatic and slightly threatening.

  7. 7. C. Her understanding of the story suddenly shifted.

  8. 8. A. personification