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.

What I'm Reading & Teaching in January

Happy new year! 2020 was a wild year and I'm interested to see how this one will turn out. More than ever this past year, books were my escape. I didn't meet my reading goal last year, but I've set my goal again at 104 books, which is 2 books a week or about 8.5 books a month. I don't usually set teaching goals, but I put a few measures in place before winter break began to make sure I'm starting off the year by offering even more support to students who are struggling.

Wednesdays are our asynchronous days, and I've set up parent meetings to check in with the parents of students who are still struggling with virtual learning or whose performance has declined. I host office hours two days a week (it's a mandatory part of my teaching schedule) and I sent out Google Calendar invites to those students who are still struggling with virtual learning or whose performance has declined to encourage them to attend my office hours.

Reading in January

Much of my reading is in the form of audiobooks and those I select based on what is available through the Libby app, but I also have stacks of physical TBR piles I'd love to work through. Since my audiobooks are primarily fiction middle grades and young adult titles, these physical books include adult and nonfiction titles to help balance things out a bit. Here's some books I'm hoping to read this month.

1. Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean (young adult, available May 2021)
2. Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield (young adult, available May 2021)
3. A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell (nonfiction)
4. How to Think Like Shakespeare by Scott Newstok (nonfiction)
5. White Rage by Carol Anderson (nonfiction)
6. The Challenging Riddle Book for Kids by Danielle Hall (nonfiction)
7. Writers on Earth by Elizabeth Kolbert and Write the World (nonfiction)
8. Tight by Torrey Maldonado (middle grades)
9. To Night Owl From Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan & Meg Wolitzer (middle grades)

Teaching in January

I use the Collections curriculum for sixth grade and we'll be finishing up the "Facing Fear" collection (themed unit) when we return from winter break. We worked through some of the fiction and poetry pieces from the collection as well as a nonfiction piece and a video text before the break. The nonfiction piece and video introduce students to the science of fears and phobias and we'll continue that focus with a few more nonfiction pieces the first week back from break. You can read more about how I make the most of the Collections curriculum here.

By week two of January, we'll be ready to synthesize all of those nonfiction readings on fears and phobias in an essay. My students are constantly writing text dependent analysis responses of various lengths, but I try to balance that throughout the year with at least one essay of each of the three types of writing: informational, argument, and narrative. This essay will satisfy the informational type, but also allow students to practice research skills. Students will include information from their readings about fears and phobias and do some additional research about a phobia of choice.

Having my students pull information primarily from texts they've already read produces better quality writing. Students are already familiar with the information and are better able to put it into their own words. This is especially helpful for my special education students. I also provide a list of websites for students to use as a starting point for their research to ensure that my students are able to find quality information about their phobia of choice. Having students write from sources and limiting their research also makes the writing process less drawn out. We can go from selecting a topic to formatting a bibliography in about two weeks.

By the final week of January, we'll be ready to kick off our literature circles connected to the "Facing Fear" collection. Students have a choice of reading one of six novels:

1. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
2. Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee
3. Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes
4. The Only Road by Alexandra Diaz
5. A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée
6. Under A Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

The literature circles will span four weeks with each week focused on a different literary skill: character, conflict, point of view, and plot. Students will engage in skill based writing and activities each week and participate in discussions with their literature circle group twice a week. I'll draw many of the activities from this list of ideas that have worked successfully in the past.

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