Lesson overview

Introduction
Story - Narrative
Middle years and up
narrative
dialogue
dialog
speech function
speech as action
punctuation
reported speech
character voice
greetings
commands
suggestions
instruction
questions
giving information
dialogue purpose
telling stories
encouragement
teasing
intimidating
threatening
character relationships
making plans
speech tags
summarising speech
mixing speech with action
word choice
expressing emotions
What are characters doing when they talk to each other? In this lesson, we explore speech as a form of action—how characters ask questions, get information, encourage, intimidate, and so on. We also look at some basic dialogue conventions and techniques, including reported speech, and creating distinctive voices. We use snippets from a variety of authors including Fracaswell Hyman, Jason Reynolds, and M.T. Anderson. This lesson contains 16 activities and will take most students 3-4 hours to complete. UPDATE: If you want to assign individual pages from this lesson, search for "dialogue activity".