Character Celebration

Like our Reading Unit 1 celebration, I wanted to find a way for the kids to demonstrate thier learning from the mini lessons.  Unit 2 was focused on character study.  The learning points I used were:
1. Readers describe their main characters by envisioning what they look like, feel like, and act like in their book.
2. Readers collect ideas about their characters personality by paying attention to what they say, what they do, and what they think/
3. Readers envision scenes in our books by sketching that scene on a post-it, keeping off stage characters in our peripheral.
4. Readers connect the text to their lives by saying, "This reminds me of..." and "This makes me realize..."
5. Readers make personal connections to the main character by discovering how the readers like the main character and how they are different from the main character.

Small groups work consisted of identifying character traits, sketching our characters to help with envisioning, self-questioning techniques when we don't understand, etc.

I was going to have them do another choice board project but I just felt like we all needed something different.  Ruth Eckerd Hall sent their production of 100 Dresses to our school for the fourth and fifth graders.  I noticed how interested my students were in the production and actors.  I thought to myself, 'Wow!  What if I had the kids literally step into the shoes of their characters?!' 

I immediately called my brother and asked him how I could prep the kids for this kind of work.  He said to have them work on pretending to be someone else with some improv games he uses with his students (he's a drama teacher).  I asked him if he had some kids that he could send over to demonstrate and talk to the kids about being a character and memorization.  It worked out that two of his students had a free period one day at the end of the school day and were able to come work with my kids.

It was a fantastic experience for my students.  They got tips on how to memorize and how to fill in what the author doesn't tell you about the character.  They also got to play some improv games that I think we may start to incorporate into our morning meetings.

Next I taught the kids what a monologue was and we started digging really deep into our characters.  I had the kids think and record the responses to such quesitons as: what is my character's background, how did you character change through the book, what is your character's greatest disappointment, happiest mement, deepest fear.  We also examined how certain emotions change the pitch of the voice or facial expressions or even body movements.  Students four or five different monologues then chose one they felt strongly they could perform well.  They were required to design a costume and memorize their monologue.

The past two days the kids have been performing their monologues.  They were very nervous and I only had three students who were too painfully shy to do it.  One of them asked to play a song on her guitar that reflected an emotion the character was feeling.  The other two decided to write book reports.  Only one student didn't complete their monologue on time.  It was a great time!

Next stop...nonfiction!