American Voices: Listening to Fiction, Poetry, and Prose

Rationale

In my sixth grade language arts curriculum I am required to teach students how to speak and write for expression. One strategy that my elementary school has adopted is 6 Traits of Writing, an approach which was developed by the North West Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL).The traits of writing are: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. ⁴ According to the NWREL writing rubric for achieving a high score for voice, the student's writing speaks directly to the reader in a way that is individual, compelling, and engaging. The writer crafts the writing with awareness and respect for the audience and the purpose for writing. ⁵ One of my rationales for teaching voice is motivated by the requirement of the New Mexico State Standards and my school's curriculum and expectations.

My students' weakest writing trait is voice. My sixth grade students are not shy, but when they converse their words often lack substance and they struggle to articulate an argument or express their true feelings. All too often the classroom is controlled by one or two students who have strong or rather loud voices. These students may appear to be more confident than other students who do not vocalize their thoughts and opinions, but at the same time the vocal students use their voices to manipulate and control others. The students who are vocal are not necessarily the best writers in the class, and transcribing spoken voice into narrative is not their strength. The talkative student is the one who has difficulty getting her thoughts down on paper, and when she does she often writes colorless stories that deviate from the plot and send the reader on a search for a conclusion or resolution. The characters developed are often one-dimensional. I want to expose this student to writers who inspire in hopes that she will be motivated to develop her own unique voice and incorporate her own experiences in her written expressions.

I am also drawn to teaching voice because it is a powerful tool, not just as a literary device, but for personal reflection and empowerment. I believe discovering one's voice is the key to empowerment and I want to convey this to my students — all of whom come from impoverished households. Many of my students recognize that they live in poverty and want to have a better life for themselves. The average sixth grade student is on the cusp of adolescence and although he may be a conformist, friends around him are starting to embrace their individuality and are looking for opportunities and avenues of personal expression. Helping the student find his voice will be challenging and most likely it will be an ongoing task, but if I can begin to help one student discover the tools to express and articulate his needs and desires, he will be one step closer to actualizing his dreams. I also want my students to realize that there are many ways to convey voice. I want to expose them to colorful and noisy poetry, rich literature that contains voices to enrich their lives and perhaps even blow their minds.

We teach voice so that the student will have the tools to make writing three-dimensional. Without voice the student's writing is flat like a soda pop that has lost its fizz. Voice helps make meaning in writing. In order for students to understand voice they need to be able to hear tone. How something is said greatly affects its meaning. When a student apologizes to another student or even to me, she often uses a tone that implies a certain attitude, conveying she is not truly sorry for her actions. This example will lend itself to a class discussion about using voice in writing to convey meaning. The tone or timbre that is identified in one's writing can often alert us to the presence of the author and this in turn allows us to hear the person behind the sentences. ⁶ My task in this unit will be to read aloud a variety of stories that are examples of voice. I will describe the children's picture books I plan on using under the section called "strategies." By using picture and storybooks I hope to convey the voices of different characters.

I hope that when the student incorporates voice in his writing the end result will be a clear representation of his personality. Robert Frost said, "The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader." ⁷ Frost is trying to convey that good writing can only be enjoyed and totally embraced by the reader when voice is present, thus allowing the sound of the writer's voice to resonate off the page. If we write with intention to create, develop, and nurture our voice, as if our own ear is our first audience, then we will be more successful in reaching our audience. We are dependent on our ears to hear the voice coming off the page because when we depend solely on the eyes to read we see only a small fraction of what is really there. Our eyes see letters that combine to form words and sentences, at times distancing us from the internal vision of the writer. Peter Elbow differentiates between voice and writing on a literal level and describes voice, "Voice involves sound, hearing and time; writing or text involves sight and space." ⁸ My goal for my students throughout this unit is to move from the definition of voice as purely sound to beginning to "hear" their own voices and develop them in writing— to create meaning and a sense of self.