DRAFT – July 2008
Lesson Topic: Confirming Characters’ Motivation Based Upon Their Actions
Materials:
• Anchor chart
• Familiar realistic fiction text with vivid main
character
• Sticky notes or Reading Response Journals
Purpose:
Examine a characters’ actions to confirm their
motives in a story.
TEKS: 2.9 C; 3.9 C; 4.10 G; 5.10 G
Connection:
• connect today’s work with our ongoing work
• explicitly state my teaching point
Review the idea that readers can often predict
characters’ motives in advance by examining the
thoughts & feelings of the character. Expand this
idea by letting students know that
Teach:
• restate my teaching point
• tell a personal or class story linked to teaching
point
• demonstrate by thinking aloud
• point out things students should have noticed
Inform students that authors do not make
characters perfect – they make them have flaws
and complications that make them interesting to
the reader and make them more like the people
that we encounter in our everyday lives. Let them
know that sometimes these imperfections result in
a mismatch between what the character thinks and
Unit of Study: Digging Deeper Into Fiction
1
what the character actually does.
Sticky note option:
Demonstrate reading aloud a short portion from a
__________ (character) is thinking/feeling
familiar realistic fiction text in which information
_________ but he/she ________________
in the text indicates that a character’s internal
thoughts and feelings directly contradict what (action). This tells me ________________
they actually do in the story. (insight about the character).
Active Engagement:
• involve students by asking them to turn and talk Reading Response Journal option:
listen, observe, and coach active involvement Character
•
Thought/Feeling
• share an example of what you heard or observed
Character
Action
Have students turn to a partner and discuss why
Do These
they think the character acts against their impulses
Match? (Y/N)
and what they believe this illustrates about the
character. What This Tells
Me About
Character
Link:
• restate the teaching point
• explain how the learning can be used in the future
Recap what you heard students sharing during the
active engagement portion of the lesson.
Emphasize the importance of noticing
discrepancies between characters’ internal
thoughts & feelings and their outward actions.
Then, invite students to try this strategy on their
own. Have students consider characters’ internal
tensions in independent reading. Students should
be taking some type of notes as they read (see
sticky note and reading response journal option
below):
Possible Conference Questions:
• How’s it going?
• What are you noticing as a reader today?
• Do the thoughts/feelings of your main character
match their actions? What does this tell you about
the character?
DRAFT – July 2008 Unit of Study: Digging Deeper Into Fiction
• How does matching characters’ thoughts & feelings
to their actions help you as a reader?