Hi guys! One of my goals for language arts this year is, to teach mini lessons that focuses on a specific skill using picture/living books. I find this type of lesson stays in their minds way more than a simple worksheet. They will remember a lesson that surrounded a favorite story way more than if I was to give them a worksheet. So, I wanted to share this quick lesson we did on character traits using The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch.
We started of by talking about what is a character trait and how can we spot it in a story. We talked about how character traits can be inferred by analyzing the feelings, thoughts, actions, and dialogue that the character has. We also talked about the importance of proving it using evidence from the text.
We used a anchor chart and worked on it together.
I also gave them a list of common traits. You can find that list here.
We wrote our character traits in blue and text evidence in red so that we can distinguish the difference. Some of the traits we came up with for Princess Elizabeth;
- brave - she was not scared of the dragon and followed the trail to track him down
- determined- she was determined to rescue the prince
- confident- even though she wore a paper bag it did not bother her
- clever- she was able to out smart the dragon.
Once the boys understood the lesson they went off and applied it to their own chapter books.
The One and Only Ivan -3rd grader
Ivan is kind, compassionate, gentle, funny, childish, friendly. I asked him to choose 3 traits and give me text evidence.
Stone Fox-1st grader
Willy is determined, smart, polite, brave, respectful, responsible. He also chose 3 traits to
provide evidence for.
Doing the mini lesson using a picture book made the concept easier to grasp and it was very entertaining. How do you teach new skills to your student/child?
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