A Character’s Challenges and Changes

Your 1st and 2nd graders will analyze how a character responded to a challenge.

Hero or Not A Hero?

Students will determine what makes a hero a hero.

Characters’ Faults Can Also Be Strengths

Strength and weakness are often two sides of the same coin. Students will explore how a character’s flaw can be a benefit.

Comparing Characters’ Bedrooms

What item’s in a character’s bedroom would reflect their deepest desires? And what if they toured a similar character’s room?

Emoji Stories 👁️

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

A Character’s Playlist

What playlist of songs best goes with a character’s change over time?

Analyze Characters Using Philosophy

What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?

Writing Sample: A Christmas Carol (Cold)

A passage from White Fang to use as a mentor text, discussion starter, or writing prompt.

Think Like A Philosopher

What would Socrates have thought if he watched Frozen?

Virtue or Vice?

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

Not Like The Others: Charlotte’s Web

Four Charlotte’s Web characters. One doesn’t belong. But which one? That depends on your argument.

The Personalities of Rocks

What would an igneous rock be like? Would it get along with a sedimentary rock? Could they handle the hot personality of a metamorphic rock?

More Specific than “Smart”

When students are told that they’re “smart”, what does this word actually mean to them? (Psst. It isn’t what we intended.)

Showing A Character’s Trait

We tell students to ‘show, not tell’ — but that advice is useless until they experience the difference. This lesson makes it click.

Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity

Your students will use Depth and Complexity to note how a character’s main trait changes across a story.

Introduce Symbolism with Pixel Art

Create a pixelated icon that represents the essence of a character!

Characters’ Talents and Multiple Intelligences

How do characters from novels line up with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences?

Motivation and Moral Development

Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?

Better Stories Part 5: Plot Structure

Ever read a student’s story that was just event after event after event and then a very sudden ending? They lack an understanding of a plot’s structure. With the help of Finding Nemo, I break down how to set up a well-structured plot.

Better Stories Part 4: Character Archetypes

Are students’ characters a bit flat? Archetypes give them a strong foundation on which to build their own characters as well as a tool to analyze existing stories.