OVERVIEW: This lesson shares with students the power of language and its control over audience. Students will analyze how stylistic devices can alter tone and emotions through a study of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and “A Christmas Memory.” Through comparison, students will note how Capote alters his style for different reader responses in his fiction and nonfiction. Students will have a stronger grasp of how close analysis can enable them to manipulate syntax, diction, and tone to achieve different effects on specific audiences for different purposes in their own writing. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: Through a careful analysis of In Cold Blood and “A Christmas Memory,” students can recognize how authorial choices produce different reactions. Once readers contemplate Capote’s purpose in composing both texts, writers can practice altering language to experience the “conditions under which people learn to do new things with language” (NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing). Through noting Capote’s talent for rhetorical manipulation and purpose for doing so, students can demonstrate the understanding of writing for audience and purpose. More importantly, observing Capote’s success can instruct our students on how to improve their writing.

Your students will apply their knowledge of letters and letter sounds as they play games and interact with letters online, using what they see and learn to create their own ABC book.