Lesson Plan

It’s All in the Personality: Character Traits

In this lesson, students will use their creativity, a graphic organizer, and a fun story to learn about character analysis.
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Need extra help for EL students? Try the Discovering Character Traits pre-lesson.
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Need extra help for EL students? Try the Discovering Character Traits pre-lesson.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to identify character traits by using text evidence and write a small paragraph analysis about a character in a story.

The adjustment to the whole group lesson is a modification to differentiate for children who are English learners.
EL adjustments

Introduction

(10 minutes)
Character Study: Split Mind Graphic OrganizerConcept Web: Character TraitsThe Boy Who Cried WolfPrincess and the Pea
  • Read The Little Red Hen as a whole group.
  • Ask students to think of words that describe the Little Red Hen. Write these words on the board.
  • Tell students that these words are called character traits.
  • Show students the Character Traits chart, read the definition, and discuss how these traits are important whenever you want to analyze, or describe, a character in a story by using evidence from the text.

Beginning

  • Provide and post the definition of the following words, along with an image if applicable, in L1 and English, for students to refer to throughout the lesson: "character," "character traits," "personality," "describe," "adjective."
  • Allow ELs to listen to the interactive story The Little Red Hen on a computer or tablet prior to the lesson if time permits.

Intermediate

  • Provide another example of a well-known story's characters, such as Cinderella, during the class discussion to give ELs a more concrete understanding of the topic.
  • For Spanish speaking ELs, write the cognates for many of the descriptive adjectives from the story (honest = honesto, responsible = responsable).

Related Guided Lesson

Informational Text 3

3 online exercises
5 printable worksheets
View Guided Lesson
Grade
fourth grade
Subject Reading & Writing