1. Character Trends. Students filled out this sheet (download here: character trends web version) to start thinking about how the main character in their novel relates to themselves and to the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. This took about 5-10 minutes.
2. Finding similarities in characters. Students took five minutes to walk around the room, comparing their Character Trends sheet with others. If they found someone who had written a similar answer, they collected a signature. The goal was to get as many signatures as possible. In this activity, our objective was to find the common (archetypal) characteristics of YA heroes. At the end of five minutes, we reviewed common responses by tossing around the world ball.
3. Character lists. Switching gears, groups gathered to create a comprehensive list of all the important characters that appeared in their novel. Then, groups assigned a number to each character (1-3) to denote its importance, and groups divided the list of characters so that each person would be responsible for an equal number of characters of each level (1-3).
4. Finally, writing. We began our character descriptions.
HW: Finish all character descriptions. Due Wednesday. Download assignment here: Writing Wikipedia Character Descriptions
Study for “5 Pillars” quiz tomorrow!
ALEXA GARVOILLE 