Character Traits

So, even though character traits aren't technically a 5th grade CC standard, I thought we would spend some time in class talking and writing about them. After all, how are students going to compare characters (which is our 5th grade standard) if they aren't sure how to talk about the characters?

Well, what I thought was going to be a one week review turned into three weeks!! Say what? Finally on week three, I was thinking that we HAD to get this done with!  It didn't help that we had assemblies and things in the middle of it all!

First, I started off with this anchor chart.

Then we talked about the differences between physical traits and character traits. I basically did this comparison in conversation on the whiteboard. If I had it to do over again,  I would probably give the students a Venn diagram or a t-chart and have them compare the two with a partner.

Once we understood what character traits were, we read a few picture books and identified the character traits of the main character.

Then, we went a little deeper with our words. Leslie Ann from Life in Fifth Grade has a great teaching resource for teaching character.

One of my favorite things that it has are character cards. These not only help the students think of untraditional words, but it improves their vocabulary.

I gave the students a word card and made sure that everyone could say their word correctly and understood what it meant. The meaning is on each card so that task wasn't so difficult.

I then read a passage from Leslie's packet to the students. I placed it under my document camera so the entire class could see the passage, too. After I read the passage, I asked the students to raise their hand if they thought they had a word that described the character from the passage.

Once we would identify a trait, the students had to find evidence in the text to support that trait. What did the character do, say, or think that made them believe he/she had this particular trait. This was probably one of the BEST lessons I have ever done on character traits.

After our whole group lesson, I had the students break into groups of 4-5 students and complete the same activity on their own. They read the passage, identified 2-3 character traits, then highlighted the evidence for each be using a different color marker. Here are some pictures of them working! They really enjoyed this part :)

Once we could do this, I had the students identify two traits that the main character in our read aloud had. They did a drawing and writing response that we hung up in the hall. Getting the students to construct a valid response will come in a later post. I have a structured format that I use right now. I am planning on posting about it soon :)  Here's a preview of what the responses looked like. It was by far the best writing class I've had on constructed responses.

The outside are their physical traits {picture, what they look like} then you open the flaps to a constructed response about their character traits {we chose two}.

If you are stuck on how to introduce TBE (text based evidence) to your students, then I have a product I am working on just for you! I am super excited and can't wait until it is FINALLY finished! I have been working on it for about a month now! You can see this is literary, so I plan on making another for informational.