Characterization is one of my favorite skills to teach. Let’s face it.  In what other way can you be a teacher like Miss Nelson, live on a farm like Fern, or survive a plane crash like Brian?  It is with characters that our students are able to use their imagination and just get lost in a book. When we think of our favorite books, the characters are what come to mind, and that’s because great books have well developed characters.

As we teach characterization, we typically focus on the characters thoughts, feelings, actions, and words to determine character traits. When we are determining character traits, we are essentially using the text evidence to help us make inferences about the type of person the character is.  For many students, this skill builds vocabulary knowledge too.  Nearly all students could select a hero or villain, and they could most likely identify them as happy, sad, mad, or kind.  As we delve into characterization more deeply though, vocabulary lags can make identifying the correct trait challenging.  As I teach character traits, I usually provide a character traits sheet as a reference like the one below for my students to keep in their interactive notebooks. This familiarizes students with the more challenging vocabulary with repeated discussions.

In addition to learning about traits, we also ask students to observe how the characters change through time. Characters are typically not static, but are rather dynamic, changing across the story plot. It is important that students record evidence during their reading, and this organizer may help your readers too.  It comes from Ms. Sanchez’s Fourth Grade website. I love how it ties to the plot events.