Unit of Study: Following Characters into Meaning Grade: 5
Big Ideas / · This unit will have students think deeply about fictional characters by making inferences, building theories, and learning life lessons.Goals
What do I want students to learn as a result of this unit? / · Develop skills with predicting, envisionment and reading with fluency.
· Infer to develop ideas about characters traits, motivations and changes.
· Grow theories about characters
Prior Knowledge
What prior knowledge do students need to enter this Unit of Study? What routines do I expect students to know? / §
Standards Addressed
What concepts will this unit address?
Bends in the Road
What bends (or series of lessons) will support each of the goals for this unit? / · Envisioning, Prediction and Inference (walking in a characters shoes)
· Building theories, gathering evidence
· Moving from inference to interpretation
Assessment / · Constructed response
Ways to Challenge/Provide Extra Support
Which students do I anticipate needing a challenge? Which students do I anticipate will need extra support? / Challenge Strategies: / Extra Support Strategies:
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NECAP
What academic vocabulary should I consider? What sample test problems could use (Math)?
Bend in Road:.Walking in a Character’s Shoes (Envisionment, Prediction, Inference) / Materials / Notes
Focus Lessons / 1 / Becoming a character in a book, being part of the mental movie. / * Stone Fox
2 / Noticing times when we are understanding the text but not taking it in.
3 / Envisioning what is happening in the story so we are in the characters shoes and remembering a time in our lives… bringing feeling and insights from our experiences to help us understand our reading.
4 / A reader revised the mental movie when story provides details that make us change our thinking.
5 / Readers reading actively by empathizing with the main character in ways that help us anticipate what the character will do next.
6 / To predict well it helps to make a movie in our mind of what has yet to happen, we think about what will happen next and how it will happen. We anticipate how things will happen by remembering what we already know of our characters.
7 / When you read in such a way that you are connected with a character, when you open your heart to him or her and care the same way you would about a friend, then envisioning, predicting, and thinking about a character happen all at once.
Bend in Road: Building Theories and Gathering Evidence
Focus Lessons / 6 / When we read we read like a professor, growing intellectual ideas about the book. We scrutinize the text to grow ideas. The most fervent ideas center on people in our books.
7 / Actions can be windows to a character, we pause after a character has done something and think about what just happened as a window to help me understand this person.
8 / It is important to keep in mind characters are complicated, they are not just one way. To grow nuanced and complex ideas about characters it helps to think about times when a person seems to act out of character.
9 / Paying attention to the objects that a character keeps near and dear is one way to grow ideas about what kind of person the character is.
10 / Readers examine the ways that people around the character treat the character, looking for patterns of behavior.
11 / Readers sharpen their ideas about characters by using precise language to describe them and their actions.
Bend in Road: From Inferences toward Interpretaion
Focus Lessons / 12 / When readers get halfway through our books it is a good idea to take some time to organize our thoughts. / * Tiger Rising / .
13 / Once readers have grown a theory, a big idea, we reread and read on with that theory in hand. / .
14 / Expert readers believe that when thinking about stories, it can pay attention to characters in general and to their motivations and struggles in particular.
15 / A simple, obvious idea about a character or book is a great place to start, use that idea as a starting place and then climb to higher levels of thinking.
16 / Things that the author mentions again and again are the ones that she really wants you to notice, the ones that are critical to understanding the essence of the character and the story.
17 / We can look back on the jotted notes we make as we read, research our thinking and put together all the clues we see which will help us construct a sense of ourselves as readers.
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Other possible teaching points……
15 Lessons I Can Teach To Help Readers Examine Characters In Their Books
- At the beginning of a book, readers pay attention to who’s here and how they are connected.
Readers pay attention to how character’s a described and try to get a mental image of the character as they read.
2. Readers pay attention to what the character’s do say and think to figure out the kind of people character’s are
3. Readers consider that main characters, like people, usually want something. This desire, or sometimes, multiple desires, is often the reason for a character’s journey. Readers look for clues in our character’s words, actions, and thoughts that describe what the main character really seems to want.
4. Readers know characters often encounter obstacles. These obstacles often get in the way of a character’s desires. Readers can mark places or times in the character’s journey that describe the struggle by asking themselves, “Is my character struggling with something? Why might they be struggling with it?”
5. Readers think about a character’s motivations. Characters, like people, do and say things for a reason. As readers, we can notice what a character does and says, and ask ourselves, “Why might the character be doing this?” We do this as a way to understand a character’s motivations.
6. We can also consider whether a character’s actions are consistent or inconsistent with previous actions by asking ourselves, “Is this consistent with what already know about the character?”
- Readers pay attention to the significant relationships a character has within a story. We notice who the character spends time with. As a character continues on his/her journey, we can ask ourselves, “Is this relationship supporting or pressuring the character?” We can talk about how these relationships affect the character.
8. Readers understand that characters in a relationship often have expectations for how the other half will act. Readers pay attention to how others meet the expectations of a character, and mark these places with jottings on a post-it..
9. Sometimes readers have a hard time relating to the characters in a story. When this happens, it is important that they put themselves in the character’s shoes. When readers are in a character’s shoes, we can speak and act as if we are the character. “Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes” can help readers to empathize with a character in order to understand how they came to be the way they are.
- Another relationship that exists in stories is between a character and his/her surrounding environment. A character’s surrounding environment includes the physical setting, which can impact a character. Readers mark clues that show how the physical setting impacts a character along their journey.
- Readers anticipate changes in the main character. Changes can sometimes be subtle, or changes can be easily seen. We can read looking for clues that point towards a character change. We can look for and mark places where change is visible.
- Just as in life, we are affected by the actions and changes in other people. So sometimes, it’s not the main character that changes, but other characters in the story. We can look for and mark places that show how the changes of others affect the main character.
- Readers consider the emotions our characters feel during major changes or turning points throughout their journey. We do this to understand how our characters may be growing and changing. We can track these emotions at major turning points by writing in our notebooks.
- Readers reflect back on the changes that happen to our character throughout their journey. We do this to understand what lessons the character has learned by reviewing our post-its and reflections that have marked changes and turning points. These ideas can be discussed with other club members.