Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Infer Motive and Effects for an Action
Help your pupils determine just what makes a character or person tick by zooming in on one character or person. This graphic organizer is dedicated to analyzing one person and asks pupils to infer a personality trait, note down an action...
K20 LEARN
Motivations In "The Gift Of The Magi": Motivation In Characters
O. Henry's short story, "The Give of the Magi," launches a study of what motivates people to act as they do. Class members identify what they believe are the motivations of the characters in O. Henry's tale and then craft a one-page...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 4: Creating Main Characters
Creating a good main character is a must when writing a creative narrative or novel. Elementary aged writers create main characters for the novel they are writing. They first use themselves as a models, then create a character as a...
Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Identify/Infer Motive
Why do people and characters act as they do? Require your class figure out the motivation of two people or characters they read about in a given text. In the short charts, pupils note down who, what they do, and why they do it. After...
Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Infer Motives
Why did they do it? Get to the bottom of complex characters and people by analyzing their motivation. Learners select an action and take a close look at that action in order to infer motive. They then explain why they determined that...
E Reading Worksheets
Character Traits and Motivations
Middle schoolers use this guided reading worksheet to identify the traits and motivations of characters in an assigned text.
Curated OER
Fortune Cookies Motivate Writing
Fortune cookies are used as motivation for a story. In this creative writing lesson, young writers review the six traits process. They discuss interesting characters, setting, problem and solution in a story. Original stories based on...
Curated OER
The Landlady Pre-Reading: The Characters
Prepare your class to read "The Landlady" by Roald Dahl with these pre-reading activities about the two main characters in the story. This resource provides a brief overview of the story as well as excerpts from the text that describe...
Curated OER
Getting to Know Characters
This set of worksheets constitutes enough work and materials to be considered a lesson. They guide readers through a process of exploring characters and their motivations, and writing a paragraph about them. Here are seven handouts that...
Curated OER
Characters in Live Performance
Your intermediate or advanced thespians choose dramatic scenes to perform in duos, small groups, or solo to demonstrate vocal and physical characterization. Use class time to prepare and rehearse. Detailed rubrics work for peer assessment.
Curated OER
A Boxful of Character
I can't wait to try this activity with my class. It's versatile and could be modified to fit any character analysis lesson. To analyze characters thoroughly, learners create life boxes. Each box will pertain to a character from any...
Santa Ana Unified School District
Characters
Are your learners only talking about the plot of the story and not the richness of the characters? Then show them how important characters are to literature with the information available here. The learner will know how authors create...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing Using the Book Rumpelstiltskin
Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...
Shakespeare in American Life
"We Few, We Happy Few": Motivational Speech in Henry V
Class members may "think themselves accurs'd" when they first hear of an assignment that asks them to create a motivational speech. After studying the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V; however, they will count...
Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Infer Predictions Based on an Analysis of Motive
Use a character or person's motivation as the basis for a prediction of that character or person's next action. Pupils select an individual from their reading, copy a quote, write down an inference about that character's motives, and...
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Identity Lesson 5: Motivation - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs provides the lens class members use to analyze and evaluate the motivations of the characters in Sylvia Plath's "Initiation" and scenes from Mean Girls. Readers then select a character from A Separate...
Curated OER
Character Motivation-Duke
Students explore a character's motivation in a text. In this characterization lesson, students view a video about Duke Ellington. Students discuss motivations for Duke Ellington and write sentences explaining Ellington's changes.
Curated OER
Stereotype Characters Activity
Here is a lesson designed for middle schoolers which helps them recognize stereotypes one way or another against a particular group of people. They also determine what may have motivated the author to use a stereotype in the first place....
Curated OER
Contrasting Characters
Students analyze characters in a story and contrast them in terms of their appearance, education, family, religion, and more. In this characters lesson plan, students fill out a worksheet provided.
Curated OER
Characters' Feelings Or Motives
Fourth graders use the text, "Fair's Fair" to examine how characters' feelings and motives are built throughout a text through descriptive phrases. They look at what a character does and says to record on their writing frames. Finally,...
Curated OER
The Secret life of Minor Characters
Students read Julius Caesar line by line. They discuss what is going on in a particular scene. Each student in a group takes the role of an assassin and comes up with a clear characterization and motivation. They share and watch within...
Curated OER
Convincing Characters
Students create vivid, active characters for a story. In this character lesson, students discuss the characters in books they are familiar with. Students create a list of novels they have read and discuss the character types. Students...
Curated OER
Character's Qualities
Sixth graders analyze the a character's qualities and the effects of these qualities on the plot and the resolution of the conflict in the story "The Pigman and Me." They develop a list of the qualities, discuss if these qualities were...
Curated OER
Character's Motive
Create a list of possible suspects for a crime based upon each character's motivation. Middle schoolers discuss the motives of each main character in The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. This lesson is part of a larger unit on this novel.