Comparing Characters

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

A Character’s Challenges and Changes

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

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?

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?

Inferring With Art: A Man

What’s going on in this painting? Who is that guy? What’s his job? And where’s his other boot?

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?

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.

Writing Sample: Moby Dick

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

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!

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.