Comparing Characters

Your young students will compare how two characters have changed in a story.

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?

Analyze Characters Using Philosophy

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

Think Like A Philosopher

What would Socrates have thought if he watched Frozen?

Characters Dressed as Other Characters for Halloween

What if one character dressed up as another for Halloween? Would the Cat in the Hat pick Captain Jack Sparrow, because they’re both chaotic yet good-natured people? Would Elsa dress up as The Ice King since they are both lonely?

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.

Student Introductions with Complexity and Frames

How have you changed over time? Students introduce themselves through the lens of change — and learn a Depth and Complexity tool in the process.

Content Imperatives: Convergence

Add complexity by considering how multiple factors 🔄 Converge within one topic.

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.

Characters’ Talents and Multiple Intelligences

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

Literary Technique: Juxtaposition

Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!

Motivation and Moral Development

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

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.