Interactions between and among human beings are complex and multidimensional. When one person engages in a conversation with another, each must read visual and verbal cues to make sense of what is being said. Understanding the tone of a speaker is crucial to understanding the speaker’s meaning. Likewise, when reading literature, particularly poetry, understanding the tone of a text is critical to making meaning of it.

Because it is a somewhat abstract concept, tone, defined in literary study as the writer’s or narrator’s attitude toward the material and reader, is generally a difficult literary element to teach. While students are introduced to tone in elementary school, many middle and high school students still have difficulty identifying tone in a work of literature. Likewise, adolescents in English language arts classrooms sometimes struggle with making meaning from works of poetry.