Session 11: Attending to voice and verb tense when editing You will need your 8th Grade Narrative Writing Checklists today along with your writing goals. Take out the newscast that you worked on last night.

Today’s teaching point We are going to look at one more lens journalists look through as they edit: they listen for the relationship between verb tense and voice. For instance, they decide when to use present or past, and active or passive tenses, to move back and forth between an on-the-edge-of-your-seat storytelling voice and a more formal, objective voice.

Present vs. past tense Present tense: The boy vaults into the parking space. Past tense: The boy vaulted into the parking space.

Active Vs. Passive Voice Active voice: the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed in the verb. The bystanders’ faces looked surprised. Witnesses heard murmurs of dismay. Passive voice:  the subject is acted upon Surprise showed up on the faces of bystanders. Murmurs of dismay were heard by witnesses.

Your turn! Re-read your piece, looking at verb tense and voice. Does everything sound the way you would like it to? Is it portraying the general message in the most direct, efficient way? Use the last minute editing checklist to check for spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes and check to make sure you are meeting your goals on the checklist. You will have the rest of class today to edit, revise, and publish your pieces to Edmodo. When you are finished publishing, you must read two of your classmates pieces and comment on something you liked about their piece and something they can work on next time (do this nicely). **Both your news story and your comments are graded this time! Lastly, think about whether you’d like to continue working on the topic for your FINAL graded assignment and jot down some follow up questions in your notebook or select a new topic and jot that in your notebook.