Active and Passive Voice

Active and passive voice represent different ways of structuring sentences—active voice places the doer of the action as the subject ("The cat chased the mouse"), while passive voice makes the receiver of the action the subject ("The mouse was chased by the cat"). Sixth-grade instruction should focus on helping students identify both constructions and understand the rhetorical effects and appropriate contexts for each, rather than simply labeling passive voice as "incorrect." Teach the structural pattern of passive voice (form of "be" + past participle + optional "by" phrase) and how to recognize it in texts, before guiding students through converting sentences between active and passive constructions. Address how passive voice shifts emphasis from the doer to the receiver of the action or allows the doer to be omitted entirely, making it useful in scientific writing (where processes matter more than who performed them) or when the doer is unknown or irrelevant. Discuss how passive voice can be used strategically to avoid assigning blame or responsibility ("Mistakes were made"), and how recognizing this pattern develops students' critical reading skills, particularly for media and political texts. Implement targeted writing activities where students practice using active voice for clarity and directness in narrative and argumentative writing, while appropriately incorporating passive voice in scientific procedures or formal academic contexts. Connect voice instruction to reading and writing across the curriculum by analyzing how different academic disciplines have conventional preferences—scientific writing often employs passive voice, while journalism typically favors active constructions.