Words to Describe Mood and Tone – Reference Sheet

Students distinguish between mood (reader's feeling) and tone (author's attitude) when analyzing a text.

Students select a precise mood or tone word from the reference bank instead of a generic term.

Students apply the six guiding prompts to reason through a text's mood or tone rather than guessing.

Keep this sheet next to whatever text students are annotating, since it has no practice items of its own and is meant as a companion reference.

Model the six guiding prompts on a shared class text before asking students to apply them independently to their own reading.

Have students underline the specific mood/tone word they chose in the word bank when writing about a text, to build the habit of citing precise vocabulary over vague terms.

Mood and tone vocabulary — students select a precise word from a 100+ term bank sorted by category (positive, negative, humorous, neutral, sorrowful).

Literary analysis reasoning — students apply six guiding prompts (author's purpose, genre, attitude, characters' feelings, reader reaction and imagined tone of voice) to determine a text's mood or tone.