Character Analysis for Spring

A few months ago, I blogged about teaching character analysis. It’s one of my favorite reading comprehension skills to teach. I think it’s one of the easiest ways to get our kids to dig deeper and start thinking about the character. Usually kids don’t have a hard time making a judgement about a character. It’s only natural, right? That boy was mean or He was nice to his mom, etc. The harder part is making them prove their statements about characters. I like to believe that there isn’t just one right answer when we are analyzing characters. I tell my students as long as you can back up your opinion, I’ll take it! We are SO lucky to be surrounded by amazing literature to teach this concept. Pick up any good book and you can usually find something to model this concept. But let’s face it, sometimes you want more practice that is a little more accessible to a group of students and a little quicker than a long story. (Don’t get me wrong, NOTHING can replace a good book when teaching comprehension. This is just a follow-up/extension of that.) I made some short stories for winter that focused character analysis skills. I meant to make fall and spring right after that, but it took me a while… 🙂 

Here we are!

This pack includes 24 short stories written in two different formats, and each with two levels of reading difficulty. You can choose the story card format:

Or printable version:

Here is how you use the cards:

There is also a spinner and task cards to use with these cards or ANY book that you are reading as a class, during guided reading groups, or for a partner activity.

I also included graphic organizers that you can use for a read aloud or guided reading groups. 

There is so much you can do with character analysis and each graphic organizer takes a different angle. (I’ll be blogging again about just using the graphic organizers.) 

You can find this pack here.