How to Teach Characters: Part 1
- simplyaaronni9
- Jul 18
- 2 min read
How to Teach Characters: Part 1
If plot is the frame of fiction, characters are the furniture. They make the fiction texts we read richer and more interesting. I bet you can think of your favorite book characters (or perhaps movie or TV characters) that have stayed with you long after you discovered them. It's all of this that makes me enjoy teaching characters! Look below on how to teach characters using this FREE worksheet!
Anytime you teach a new skill, it's essential that you define it. It's important to define it because it gives students a firm base line of what characters are. This information may seem obvious, but not every student will inherently or immediately get the idea. From there, it's important to provide examples, as well as where characters fall in the elements of plot, as well as the setting.
When it comes to understanding, it's important to know their individual traits. You can use picture books or talk about this in general, but one of the best ways is to explicitly define it. From there, it's important for students to know the difference between physical and character traits. It's important to know the difference because the depth of knowledge (or DOK) between know what you can see about a character is different from the inherent traits within a character. Anyone can look at someone, but they can infer about the person using their actions?
Now that we've provided explicit practice in identify physical versus character traits, it's important that students get the chance to find both within a text. This is important because finding physical and character traits is not done in isolation; the skill only carries weight when they can find both (or either) in authentic texts. Students get the chance to identify both after reading a short passage. This part of the worksheet is perfect for a quick small group.
At this point, you've defined characters, physical traits, character traits, and had students use a passage to identify physical and character traits. The idea is that students have a basic understanding of these ideas before you move onto this part of the worksheet.
After reviewing all of the above, it's important to explain what character roles are. This is important because characters are not put in passages, books, movies, or TV shows by accident; they are put there on purpose. Explain that characters can have positive or negative roles (sometimes both). This essential because you can use a character's role to either infer about them or predict their future behavior.
From there, provide general roles of characters. Make it clear that characters are important because they help us follow the story. Frozen is not Frozen without Elsa and Anna. The Lion King is no the Lion King without Simba. Characters are important to stories. Without them, the story, movie, TV show, or book falls apart.
Now is the time to practice. Allow students the chance to identify both positive and negative character traits in characters. It's important to practice this isolation before moving onto a full passage.
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