Establishing Voice in the Personal Narrative

Name: Connar Kelley

Subject: English

Date: September 18, 2015

Grade Level: 9

Common Core Standard:

Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid
picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters. (CCSS.ELALITERACY.W.9-10.3.D)
Focus: As the class has just picked a topic for their writing of a personal narrative, they
will learn the importance of using their own voice to compose their personal narrative.
Objectives:
The students will be able to:
Identify the use of voice in personal narratives
Show emotion through sensory language rather than simple adjectives
Convey a voice in a piece of narrative writing
Materials:
Gone Girl- Use of Voice in a Narrative Worksheet (see below)
Emotional Voice Cards
Activities and Procedures:
1. Introduce the activity as being important in terms of using voice in the personal
narratives.
2. Pass out the examples of positive and negative uses of voice. Read aloud the two
passages to emphasize voice.
3. Have the students collectively make a list about what a strong voice does for the
narrative.
a. It shows the writer's personality
b. It sounds different from everyone else's
c. It contains feelings and emotions
d. The words come to life
e. It comes from the heart
4. Emphasize the idea that words can be used to capture strong emotion.
5. Pass out one Emotional Voice Card to each student. Make sure they dont show
anyone what emotion they receive.
6. Have students write a short paragraph in which they reveal their assigned emotion
without the word on their card or a synonym of that emotion word.
7. At the end of five minutes, have students share their paragraph with a group of 3
or 4 students. The rest of the group members must try and guess what emotion is
being portrayed in the paragraph.
8. Return as a whole class and have students share their paragraphs.
Evaluation and Assessment: By discussing the voice-filled paragraphs as a class, we
can evaluate if the students understand the concept of using voice to convey emotion. The
final evaluation of this will be assessed in how they implement their voice in the personal
narratives.

Mini-Lesson Rationale
As we are about to start working on our personal narratives, it is crucial that my
ninth grade students have an idea about the importance of using a strong voice in
narrative writing. Yale Teacher Institute claims, that narrative voice engages the writer in
the act of writing, increases the reader's comprehension and brings life to an inanimate
object, the written word (Deschere). These connections are imperative so I intend to
stress this to my students. For starters, I will use an example of a strong voice in a
popular novel. The passage discusses the main characters own opinion about what it
means to be a Cool Girl. This is a great passage for my ninth grade students as they
may be able to relate to her ideals that she is expressing. I will then show them the same
passage, modified in a weak narrative voice so they can see what elements are lost when
a voice in the narrative is not strong. Again, the Yale Teacher Institute suggest students
must be exposed to good literature and try to mimic the techniques with guidance until
they feel proficient at performing them alone (Deschere). After we are done modeling,
the students will then have the opportunity to try finding their voice on a small scale first.
They will simply have to show their narrative voice through exemplifying one emotion.
By starting slow, students can gain confidence in their voice before applying it to their
entire personal narrative.
Deschere, Victoria. In Their Shoes: Finding Voice through Personal Narratives. YaleNew Haven Teacher Institute. (2015) Print.
Formative and Summative Assessments
Because we have just introduced the usage of voice into narrative writing, I do not
want to collect and grade these Emotional Voice Cards. Instead, I expect to see the usage
of personal voice within the narratives of my students grow strong. I will determine this
by looking at the rough drafts of their personal narratives. If I feel we need to work more
on creating a voice, I will do more writing workshops with voice as the focus. A
summative assessment of this concept will be seen as students must write personal
narratives that share who they are (their voice) when writing personal statements for
college applications and other college-prep classes.

Gone Girl- Use of Voice in a Narrative

Gillian Flynns Use of Voice:
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe theyre fooled because so many
women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I
used to see men friends, coworkers, strangers giddy over these awful pretender
women, and Id want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman,
you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward
men whod like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.
And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: Theyre not even pretending to be the
woman they want to be, theyre pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh,
and if youre not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesnt want the
Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version maybe hes a vegetarian, so Cool Girl
loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe hes a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a
tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics.
Ms. Kelleys Use of Voice:
I was offended when people called me a Cool Girl because I feel that this type of
girl does not exist. Girls that think they are Cool Girls are really just trying to be someone
that they think men would like.
Reflective Questions:
What type of emotion is the narrator feeling in Gillian Flynns version?

What is lost by Ms. Kelleys version?

What does a strong narrative voice do for a narrative?

Emotional Voice Card Words

1. Acceptance
2. Affection
3. Aggression
4. Ambivalence
5. Apathy
6. Anxiety
7. Boredom
8. Compassion
9. Confusion
10. Contempt
11. Depression
12. Doubt
13. Envy
14. Embarrassment
15. Euphoria
16. Forgiveness
17. Frustration
18. Gratitude
19. Grief
20. Guilt
21. Hatred
22. Hope
23. Horror
24. Hostility
25. Homesickness
26. Hunger
27. Hysteria
28. Interest
29. Loneliness
30. Love
31. Paranoia
32. Pity
33. Pleasure
34. Pride
35. Rage
36. Regret
37. Remorse
38. Shame
39. Suffering
40.
Sympathy