Multiple Pressures: Character

As the year moves along you begin to think daily "how will my kids write about this?"  Teachers at McK tell students that they can write about anything that has been taught.  Only certain things are required or "graded" so to speak but if it is important enough to teach then students can work on it in their reading. One day in 5th grade we focused on how characters face multiple pressures.  This is the entry for the mini-lesson that day.
Those Shoes is a great book because mini things can be taught out of it....even in 5th grade.  It is a great book to teach hard concepts like (motivation, multiple pressures, symbolism, etc...)

Character Motivation

Character Motivation was one of those things teachers felt wasn't necessarily hard but that the kids had trouble writing about it in their reading notebooks.  Students would say they were motivated but not necessarily why.  Whenever this happens, as a CLT we come together to think about the concept/strategy.  We define and then practice writing entries with evidence and higher level thinking.  We defined motivations as the reasons a character does something or behaves a certain way.  Then we thought about what are the big reasons characters behave the way they do.  We made a list. We reflected on some favorite read alouds/main character/their motivation.  Then we try it out in entry format. 

(5th grade)

(4th grade)

(4th grade)

Character Entries

Whenever students get stuck or say they don't have an entry or something to write about I always tell them to examine or think more about the main character and/or secondary characters.  So much strong thinking comes from analyzing characters and their actions, motivations, their feelings, how they change, etc.  Thinking about characters is great work. 

(3rd grade chart)

Character traits are something we begin working on as early as kindergarten. By the time we get to 3rd grade and higher we want to expose students to more sophisticated vocabulary.  This is one way we found to raise the level of rigor in a simple character entry. This chart grows throughout the year.  You can see the possibilities are endless.

(4th grade chart)

You can see the thought + evidence + higher level thinking. Sometimes higher level thinking is simply a new understanding ot perhaps something you realize now....it is not always earth shattering but you can see how by adding higher level thinking (using the elaboration prompts) it beefs up an entry.

Elaboration prompts below: