Teaching Characterization to Middle & High School Students

Characterization is the way we come to know the characters of a short story, novel, or drama. While sometimes revealed directly, most of what we learn about characters is revealed through their actions, dialogue, thoughts and feelings, appearance, and their effect on other characters. I detailed the many ways I introduce and reinforce characterization in this previous blog post and you can find even more ideas below.

Examining Action & Getting Into Character
This lesson from Read Write Think first has students identify a character's traits based on their actions. The lesson includes samples as well as a student handout and an extensive list of character traits (adjectives). Part two of the lesson has students imagine that they are one of the characters and generate a list of character traits they would use to describe themselves and three of their co-characters. Students then read over each other's lists and try to guess which character would describe themselves and others that way.

Analysis Through Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers are the perfect tool for literary analysis. With a few well-placed questions, the teacher can advance thinking for a student who has a firm grasp on the story. With a bit of scaffolding or alternatives to writing (pictures, color symbolism), students who struggle with comprehension can soar. Characterization graphic organizers allow for all students to find success.
*Recommended by Lauralee, Language Arts Classroom

Practicing With An Animated Short Film
The Adventures of Hopscotch: Hopscotch Begins animated short film and characterization activities provide a comprehensive set of engaging, rigorous resources for literacy instruction. The materials don’t just tell Hopscotch’s story through an animated short film. They use that story to explicitly teach literacy skills. Students eager to learn about Hopscotch’s adventures will receive an instructional lesson about characterization as they view the video, which means they can replay it if they need to see or hear it again. Meanwhile, the story’s design will give students many opportunities to practice characterization. The accompanying activities provide the resources to offer them those chances. They are also supplied in an editable template so that they can be applied to a separate, written core text. Students will be able to engage with them independently or with the teacher and in any instructional model, including in-person or virtual formats. Therefore, the Hopscotch video and characterization activities not only provide a comprehensive set of materials to teach character throughout the year but also will make Hopscotch a welcome member of your class.
*Recommended by Lauren, LIT Lessons

Create Opportunities For Collaboration
This blog post from Teach Between The Lines has not one or two, but three great ideas to get students thinking, discussing, and working together. Idea number one is The Great Motivation Debate, which allows student to collaborate in small groups to become detective and attorney in. First, students play detective to find the true motivation of a character and find evidence to support this assessment. Then, they play attorney as they use that evidence to craft mini-arguments to debate in the ‘courtroom.’ Idea number two asks students to look at a character through the perspectives of other people in the scene/moment with them and consider how the characterization might be interpreted by other characters. Idea number three is a discussion centered around character displacement: taking a character out of their “world” or “text” and place them in another. Students discuss how a character would interact with others outside their own story, which requires a deep understanding of the character.

Spark Students' Imagination With A Visual
Rather than using a text to have students explore characterization, this activity begins with a pair of shoes. You can use images of shoes found online or collect them from home or from colleagues to create a selection of shoes to represent people of all ages and walks of life. Students will pick a pair to analyze and create the character that the shoe belongs to. The Secondary English Coffee Shop has a list of questions to accompany this activity and get students creative juices flowing. You could do a similar activity with bags, lunches, lockers, etc.

You can find all of my resources for teaching characterization and character types here.

Teaching Literary Elements: Character

When learning about characterization and character types, students begin to examine an author's craft. Why did the author describe the character that way? What does the author's description allow the reader to learn about a character indirectly? Whether you are teaching these as new concepts for your students, diving in deeper, or just reviewing the basics, you'll find activities and resources below that will benefit all levels of students.

Terms to Teach
At the start of my teaching career, I taught primarily ninth grade students at an urban, Title 1 high school. My students came from a variety of K-8 schools, which meant they came with varying English Language Arts experiences. To ensure that all of my students started high school with a strong foundation in the literary elements, I found it best to give direct instruction followed by ample opportunities to apply terms and practice skills.

During my direct instruction, I introduced students to the following terms: direct and indirect characterization, protagonist, antagonist, and round, flat, dynamic, static, and stock characters. Many of my students were unaccustomed to taking notes so I provided them with a guided note taking template. This three column sheet provided a structured space for the term, definition, and examples.

Activities for Reinforcement
Before applying these newly learned terms to a short story or novel, I like to give my students opportunities to practice using shorter texts or media. For character, using short video clips provides great visual reinforcement. I have collected examples of character development in this playlist. I play a few and have students identify any character types they spot: protagonist, antagonist, and round, flat, dynamic, static, and stock characters.We also discuss the traits of different characters and how those traits are developed through dialogue, action, appearance, etc. I then have students select one of the clips and write a paragraph or two of what that character development would look like in a book instead of a movie.

If I have students who are still struggling to identify the different methods of characterization after a few practice opportunities, I pull them into a small group and do some "drill and kill" with these free characterization practice handouts. In a small group, I can get a better understanding of where the root of their confusion is and give them immediate feedback as they work through a series of examples.

Incorporating Movement and Hands-on Activities
One year I taught at an all boys school so giving them opportunities to move around and get some of that energy out was a must. Using stations focused on conflict and characterization is one way I did that. I pushed together desks, but you can also use tables, to set up six stations around the room. At each station, students completed activities such as matching terms and definitions and categorizing types of characterization. Because all of the station activities involve matching, sorting, or sequencing, they are easy to check and offer feedback to students on their mistakes. I recently updated those stations to include a digital option as well.

Another way to incorporate movement is having students act out different character traits: friendly, grouchy, determined, lazy, tidy, disorganized, etc. To make this a little more challenging, I will limit the ways in which they can show this trait, i.e. only through actions, only though thoughts, etc. I'll have other students try to identify the trait and the method of characterization.

Texts to Read
I often teach character along with conflict, so my favorite short stories are the same for both literary elements: "Thank You M'am" by Langston Hughes and "The Lady or the Tiger?" by Frank Stockton. Both of the stories offer complex characters.

In "Thank You M'am," a young man tries to rob an elderly woman, who turns out to be not so helpless and in the end, shows tremendous kindness to her assailant. The story can lead to interesting discussions about antagonists; sometimes a story has more than one, sometimes an antagonist is not a "bad person," and sometimes the protagonist of a story is his/her own antagonist.

In "The Lady or the Tiger?" a princess must decide whether her lover will be married off to another woman or mauled to death by a tiger because her father, a barbaric king, disapproves of her relationship with a commoner.  Students are desperate to know to which door the princess sent her lover and go through the short story with a fine tooth comb looking for evidence to support their belief about whether she sent him to the lady or the tiger.

Creative Application
Once students seem comfortable with the terms or if students need a challenge, I introduce students to a digital breakout, "Character Witness" for additional practice. A digital breakout is an online scavenger hunt-like game where players use teamwork and critical thinking to solve a series of challenging puzzles in order to open a series of locks.

In this breakout, students are asked to serve as a character witness for a friend who has been accused of a crime he didn't commit. As a character witness, students will testify on his behalf about his positive traits, high moral standards, and upstanding reputation in their community. Since they've never done this before, their friend's lawyer sent them some notes on what to say, which are saved on a password protected flash drive. Students have to interact with a variety of text and media to solve a series of puzzles and and help prove their friend's innocence.

In addition to needing content knowledge to successfully complete the game, breakouts require students to think critically, communicate, collaborate, and use creativity. I also love breakouts because they provide students with many opportunities to fail and try again. Every unsuccessful attempt to open a lock forces them to reexamine their information and their thinking.

Assessment
While many of the activities described above allow students to show their understanding of skills and terms, as a summative assessment I use a set of text-based assessments, each with a reading passage and 10 multiple choice questions, to assess my students’ knowledge of characterization and character types. 

The variety of passages and text complexity levels allows me to retest students as needed and make accommodations for struggling readers. The variety was also helpful in the years that I had classes whose eyes tended to wander during quizzes or tests.

You can find all of my resources for teaching character here.

Text Based Drawings: A Creative Way to Get Students to Use Evidence from the Text

Asking students to cite evidence for every single question they answer when reading and responding to a text might be good practice and ensure that they are reading closely, but it also becomes repetitive. One way to mix things up is to ask students to draw a picture and label it based on details from the text.  

For example, as my students did a close reading of a passage from Chapter 1 of Of Mice and Men, they looked for the differences between the two main characters, George and Lennie. 

They used one color/symbol for George and another color/symbol for Lennie. Lots of students busted out their highlighter collection or colored pencils, but underlining, circling, starring, etc. works too. On a second read of the passage, students looked for language that compared the characters to animals and marked that with a third color/symbol.

One of the after reading activities was to draw and label a picture of Lennie using details from the text. Students had already identified these details in their close reading, but drawing Lennie helped students to better visualize what this character looks like and how he behaves. It was also a creative way of getting students to pull evidence from the text without just having them write.

As we continued reading Of Mice and Men, we did another close reading of the text, this time focused on a scene where Curley's wife is introduced in into Chapter 2. After reading, students drew and labeled a picture of her using details from the text.

This hands-on activity will engage your visual learners and even non-artistic students will love comparing their drawings with others. A slight variation of this activity would be to make copies of the page or pages that you would like students to pull evidence from. Students could then cut out the details describing the character, setting, etc. and glue it onto their drawing.

You can find all of my Of Mice and Men resources, including the activities and close readings described above, here.

Word Art: A Creative Lesson on Characterization & Symbolism

The inspiration for this project came from seeing an image of the mockingjay pin from The Hunger Games created out of words. My students were reading The Hunger Games at the time and I wanted to have them create something similar. I looked at sites like Wordle and Tagxedo, which let you create word clouds, but neither had the flexibility in shapes that I was looking for, so this project ended up being no-tech.

Students first selected their favorite character from the novel and brainstormed words to describe and associated with that character. During this brainstorming, you may want to remind students of the different methods of characterization: direct characterization and indirect characterization through appearance, actions, thoughts and feelings, dialogue, and other characters’ comments. I encourage students to use as much language from the text as possible.

From this brainstorming, an object that would serve as an appropriate symbol may arise. For example, in The Hunger Games, Peeta was a baker so a loaf of bread would be an obvious symbol to use for him. I’ve also used this activity with Of Mice and Men, and a red dress would be an obvious symbol for Curly’s wife.

You may want to encourage students to think a little deeper and choose a symbol that is representative of the character’s traits. For example, in Of Mice and Men, Lennie is very curious, so a question mark might be used as a symbol for him or George is the more intelligent one in the pair, so a brain might be used as a symbol for him.

Once students have selected an appropriate symbol, they will use the words that they brainstormed to create the image. I encourage students to do a rough draft first so they can play with the layout of the words. I find it easiest for them to lightly sketch out the lines of their drawing and then place the words on top. Some words may need to be larger or smaller than others. If needed, I allow students to repeat words. 

When students complete their final draft, I encourage them to use different colors for their words to help create the image. If they are going to color anything else, have them do light shading so that the words can all still be read.

You'll be surprised with the creativity of your students and even "non-artistic" students will enjoy this activity. If you try it out with your students, I'd love to see what they come up with!

You can find all of my Of Mice and Men resources, including the activity described above, here.

Creative Writing 101: Crafting Well-Developed Characters

Often when my students write a narrative, their characters are flat and predictable. Students are so focused on the events in the plot, that they don't develop their characters into multi-dimensional or round characters. To help students practice creating well-developed characters, I created this writing activity.

First, I cut out people from magazines. I avoided celebrities or well-know figures so that students didn't have any preconceived ideas about what his/her character would be like.

To save yourself time, you could have students do the prep work for this activity by asking one class to cut out characters for another class. If you only have one class, allow students to cut out the characters for other students.

Then put several characters into an envelope, filling one envelope per student. The surprise factor is part of the fun of this activity. Students will select two people from their envelope to develop into characters, so put at least three or four people in each envelope to give students some choices. I tried to include a mix of genders, races, ages, etc.

After students have selected two people, they will complete a character sketch for each, deciding the details of what his/her characters look like, act like, their interests, etc. Have students glue their pictures of their people on the back of their character sketch in case students don't finish that day or for later reference.

Once students had a detailed character sketch, I presented them with Mad Lib-esque prompts. Students had to insert the characters they developed into these situations and begin writing short vignettes. I created a series of four prompts, giving students about five minutes to start writing in response to each.

It wasn't important to me that students write out a complete narrative for each prompt, I just wanted them to practice crafting a story around their character. You could allow students to pick one or more of the prompts to develop into a larger narrative or have students save their characters for their next narrative writing assignment.

You can find this creative writing activity and others here.

For more writing lesson ideas and resources:

'Tis The Season: Four Tips for ELA Teachers to Navigate the Holidays

The holiday season is hectic for everyone, but maybe even more so for teachers.

We want to wrap things up neatly before the holidays so that we can start fresh when we can return in January; no papers or projects hanging over into the new year. We are in a frenzy to finish up grading before we head home to the holidays or we are collecting a mountain of assignments to be graded as we sip hot cocoa in front of the fireplace.

Read on to find ideas for engaging lessons in the final days before winter break, a meaningful gift exchange for students, and easy gifts for you to give.

End of the Year Project Idea: Literary Theme Park

At the end of one school year, my principal announced that she wanted to see us all engaged in project based learning. It was the new buzz word, though not as popular as it is now, and despite having final units and weeks planned, we were now supposed to add a project into the mix. 

My students had just wrapped up reading and acting out Romeo and Juliet.

 And now we were engaged in a mini-argument essay on teenagers and their decision making capabilities. Finals were soon approaching. 

I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do, but I knew I wanted it to be fun and engaging. My students had just struggled through Shakespeare and were courageous enough to read and act in front of their peers. Now they were still working hard, crafting an argument essay. I also knew I wanted to connect the project to the final. I didn't want my students to be stressing over a final project and a final exam.

I am not sure where the idea came from but I decided to create a project centered around a literary theme park (with emphasis on theme). The rides could connect to events in the plot, shops and eateries could connect to characters, the theme of the park could connect to a theme in the play, etc. But would my ninth grade students be into it? Sometime the ideas I thought were awesome, they didn't quite share my opinion.

But they loved this! The first step was to review the plot of the play using this tragedy cycle graphic organizer.

After I checked off their plot as complete and correct, students moved on to planning their rides,  attractions, shops, food, souvenirs, etc. using this outline.

I showed students a very simplistic sample park layout, but you could also show students real maps of amusement parks, historical parks, or nature parks. Just make sure the map has a key on it and you draw attention to that.

Once I checked off their outline for completion, students were free to begin the poster with the map of their amusement park. What they came up with was amazing! Here are just a few:

I also had the students present so they could share their parks with their peers. This was low pressure, even for students who don't like to speak in class.

While I used this project with Romeo and Juliet, you could use it with any story, novel, or play. Assign your students your most recent text or let them pick a favorite from the year to focus on. History teachers could adapt this to focus on a historical event or time period covered. Science teachers could focus on a concept or unit. Grab this free resource by clicking on the image below.

Enjoy your final days of school!

Creative Writing 101: Point of View Retellings

You would never want to insult your students by having "little kid" books in your classroom library, even if you have students reading at that level. But is it ever okay to bring children's stories into the classroom?

My blogger friend Lauralee of The Language Arts Classroom wrote a post about using literary terms like characterization, mood, and point of view from children's books to teach high school students.

It got me thinking about how I use The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith to teach the literary term unreliable narrator. And that got me thinking about a fun creative writing assignment, having students retell a classic fairy tale or other well known story from an alternate point of view.

I use The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka for this lesson, but there are so many other choices: The Frog Prince Continued also by Jon Scieszka, Goldilocks and The Three Bears by James Marshall, and these collections of The Other Side of the Story. I haven't read any of the stories from The Other Side of the Story collections, but each story can also be purchased individually like Really, Rapunzel Needed a Haircut! and Seriously, Cinderella Is SO Annoying! I even learned that there is a term for this type of story, a fractured fairy tale.

I am partial to the Jon Scieszka books because they always have great illustrations. I scan the book and create a PowerPoint of the pages so that my students can read along with me. If you are having trouble getting your hands on one of these books, many of them can also be found on YouTube. I also saw some great Pinterest boards of other titles. There are so many possibilities.

Which story you choose to use as a mentor text is up to you. I recommend not sharing too many as not to limit students' choices when they choose a story to rewrite. After analyzing the differences in The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, I offer some suggestions of topics (including superheroes for those boys that think fairy tales are girly) and planning questions to help think about how students' stories would differ from the originals.

A few excerpts of my students' work:

Batman & Robin

After re-capturing the Riddler, Batman and Robin went back to the batcave. While in the batcave Robin was thinking over how his role as a superhero all started. 

(flashback) It was a cool summer evening the young adolescent was was defiling a strange automobile. Upon being discovered in his act of criminal activity the Batman appeared from the shadows. Young Robin looked in somewhat shock and surprised. He apologized to him but Batman was still unpleased with his actions. But none the less, the boy was ready to take off if things got hairy...

Cinderella:

I know you’ve heard about Cinderella and the glass slipper but I’m here to tell you the real story. I am Lady Tremaine, Cinderella’s “evil” step mother as they say. But, in reality Cinderella is a cruel person. I've tried my hardest to raise Cinderella but she’s been out of control every sense her dad's death. To start off, she stole money and jewelry...

Allowing students to retell a well-know children's story from an alternative perspective gives those students who struggle with getting started a starting point as well as a format to guide their writing, while still hitting all of the Common Core narrative writing standards as well as working on characterization and point of view.

For this and other creative writing activities, check out this engaging, common core aligned resource.

Tweet Sheets: A Creative Lesson on Characterization & Point of View

Let me first say that at the time I created this lesson, I did not have a Twitter account. I didn't even really know how Twitter worked. But I did know that my high school students liked Twitter. Some of them loved Twitter. Some of them would write their Twitter handles on their classwork, on their folders, on my white board when they thought I wasn't looking, everywhere.

With that in mind as I was planning activities for my literature circles at the beginning of the year, I thought why not make reading more fun and exciting by connecting it to something my students already think is fun and exciting. My students had a choice of five novels, all on the theme of coming of age, at the start of the year. The novel they selected determined which literature circle they were in. One day a week was dedicated to these literature circles. Students had fifteen minutes to read silently and independently before working with their group on an activity for the rest of the period.

The first group activity was "tweet sheets." To introduce the concept, I used the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I asked students what they knew about Goldilocks (she had curly hair, she wasn't afraid of anything or had "no rap" as my students would say, broke into people's houses, etc.). From our list of ideas, I asked students to come up with a Twitter handle for Goldilocks. What would she call herself? My favorite possibility was @CurlyHairDon'tCare. My intro was short and sweet. The kids got it and got excited.

In their groups, students then listed six characters from their own novel and described each character using evidence from the text. Using these descriptions, they created possible Twitter handles for the characters.

On the reverse side, students listed three events that occurred so far in their novel. Finally, students selected a few of the characters and their Twitter handles from the front side to use to respond to the events. Students were directed to use first person as they wrote their tweets and think about how the character would think and feel about the events in question.

At the end of class, students were given a packet of tweet sheets to complete as they continued reading their selected novel. This was their "homework" as they read, to be collected upon completion of reading. I asked that they complete one tweet per chapter or section of their novel to make sure their tweets were spread out. You may ask students to do a tweet for every certain number of pages read. The last page can be copied as many times as necessary.

This activity could just as easily be used with a short story or nonfiction text. Be prepared to read some hilarious things, but also some sad and serious ones (depending on your choice of texts). If you try out this activity with your class, I would love to hear how it goes!

You can find the resources for this activity here. If you are looking for more literature circle activity ideas, check out my posts on literary postcards and character silhouettes.

Character Silhouettes: A Creative Close Reading Activity for Fiction & Nonfiction Texts

Creating character silhouettes is the perfect activity for the close reading of character or a figure from an assigned or selected fiction or nonfiction text.

Like literary postcards, character silhouettes are an activity that can be used with any grade level and can be used to reinforce the ideas of character and characterization. This activity can be done during or after reading with any short story, novel, play, or nonfiction text.

Literary Postcards: Writing From A Character's Point of View

Looking for a way to reinforce the ideas of character and point of view? Literary postcards are a great activity for any grade level.

I teach 9th grade English (don't be misled by some of the sample drawings and writing below) and my students completed this activity at the end of reading a novel in their literary circles.

Students had a choice of five coming of age novels (Sunrise Over Fallujah, Split, The Skin I’m In, Standing Against The Wind, and The Fortune of Carmen Navarro) and were grouped based on their choice. While all of the books deal with growing up and maturing, several also death with issues of abuse and bullying which are so important for teenagers to read about and discuss.