Part of teaching mood and tone to children involves teaching them to identify the mood or tone associated with different words. Give your students a list of mood words, such as "scary," "peaceful," "foreboding" and "bright." Also give them a list of tone words, such as "unhappy," "reassured," "nervous" and "relieved." Next to each word, have students write "positive," "negative" or "neutral" based on the word's associations. Take up the exercise as a group and discuss the students' findings.
Using visuals can be an effective way to teach mood and tone. Find pictures of different facial expressions from magazines or printed from the Internet and bring them into class. Also bring in pictures of different settings, houses and landscapes. Hold them up to the class one at a time. Have students identify the tone of the faces and the mood of the pictures. Ask students to specify what details in each led them to their conclusions.
Eventually, students need to take their knowledge of mood and tone and apply it to the reading of literature. Read the opening paragraph or page of a story and ask students to identify mood and tone. For mood, have them focus on the details of a setting; for example, the students can discern if the author is describing a scary or calm atmosphere. For tone, have students look for verbal cues and direct addresses to ascertain the speaker's attitude toward the characters or material he is describing.
Once students have learned to identify mood and tone in a literary text, they can use this skill to create their own literature. Allow students to write a story about anything they want, but specify that they must choose a mood and tone in advance. Students should select the mood for their story and decide what descriptive strategies they will use to construct that mood. Similarly, they should select a tone for their speaker and decide what kind of a character he will be.