Reading in the Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools, Spring, 2010

The lesson plan that I chose is called “Become a character: Adjectives, Character Traits, and Perspective.” This lesson plan deals with students being able to coherently use various amounts of detailed adjectives to relate themselves with a character in the piece of literature that is being read at the time. I believe that character analysis is a very important tool that should be used by every English teacher to inspire students to find a character in every book they read that is similar to them. I also believe that character analysis helps students get more involved in reading because it allows them to connect with certain characters in a story that may be going through the same thing as the student who is reading it.
This lesson plan says that it requires the use of the internet to look up various adjectives that could help the students with their comparisons, but I think that a thesaurus would work just as well. What the lesson plan calls for is for the students to use an internet site that helps them organize the information they have gathered about the characters in the book. Once the students have put their information into the web site, the site puts the information they have entered into a chart so the information is easier to view. I think that this step can be either skipped or done in a different manner. I would have the students find a character they feel they relate to in the story and go through the book and write down some of the character’s mannerisms, thoughts, statements, etc... Once they have done that, as the lesson plan says, the students should take their information and by using a thesaurus, they should find ten very descriptive adjectives that accurately describe them and the character they have each chosen to represent themselves. The key to this assignment is that each student cannot let anyone else know whom they are. Once all of the students have completed their adjective research, the teacher will post all of the readings with a number besides each posting ranging from one to however many students there in the class. As a class, they will try to guess which students wrote which descriptions. I really like this lesson plan because not only does it allow each student to relate to any character they want in the piece of literature being read at the time, it also gets the shyer people in the class involved because they will be needed to help uncover whose descriptions is whom’s.

Hap, I agree that character analysis is important. It is one of the many ways to bridge the gap between the text and our lives. As teachers, isn't that a big part of our job? To show students new ways to look at the world? So a lesson focused on character analysis could open some doors. What age would you gear this toward? It seems to me that it would be appropriate for middle school or ninth grade. This activity is not too complicated, it's a good foundation for going into deeper themes. This lesson breaks it down into something simple and understandable, a good building block for students who are developing their critical analysis skills. By later high school, this skill should be second nature and hopefully the lessons are focusing are more in depth themes.

Anticipation Guide Review:

I enjoyed the anticipation guide. I feel that the guide made me think a little bit before I read the article. However, after i read the article, I felt like I really had to think about why I had chosen agree or disagree. This exercise made me not only think about my experiences with using the internet, but the stereotypical guy and girl and how as a sex we each use the internet for different reasons. I will definitely use this when I begin to teach.

I think this is a very interesting lesson plan. It really makes the students think about the characters they have read about in books. The characters should never just be taken at face value, but readers should put together a human being in their mind with all the clues given from the author.
It would also be very interesting to see which character each students believe they are most like. By taking the time to really figure out a character, students can better understand the literature they are reading