ELA Lesson

Grade Level and Unit: Reading

Session and Description of Lesson Tasks: Characterization, Character Sketches

Materials needed: ¨  Posters ¨  Trumpet of the Swan ¨  Pencils & origami paper

Grouping Decisions: Small group

Learning goals & Essential Questions How do characters help us to understand the story? Objective(s) I can infer character traits. I can identify character traits. I can identify actions and examples from the text that show character traits.	Language Objectives trait
MA Frameworks: Reading Standards for Literature Grade 4 Key Ideas and Details 1. Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. 3. Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g. a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).

Connect: Let’s take a look at the poster we created at the beginning of reading group.  We have all the literary elements we learned about while reading Loser, and all of the Reading is Thinking pieces. As we continue to read Trumpet of the Swan, we are going to pay careful attention to characters and their traits.  Our writing prompt for the week was to write about a character from a book you love and describe three of that character’s traits.  What is a trait? Anticipate: Something about that person Their personality A characteristic

Implementation Introduction Focus Questions/Hook/Launch: Today as we read up to chapter seven, your job is to write down all the character traits of Louis on this special piece of white paper. Explore: Let’s share what we learned about Louis in today’s reading.  If you hear an idea that you really like and don’t have written down, feel free to add it to your paper. On the back of the white paper, we are going to note the actions that support Louis’s traits.  For example, if you say that he is bright, think of an example from the text that let’s you know he’s bright.  Did he learn a new word at school?  Did he do something other swans don’t normally do? Summary: We are going to take all of Louis’s character traits and all of the reasons why and build our own mini swans.  Max is going to share with us how to turn our white pieces of paper into origami birds.

Evidence: Did they- Identify characters that the character has? Back up those claims with evidence?

Differentiated Instruction ELL IEP/Modification/Accommodation Extension

Notes and Reflections This was a particularly fun reading group lesson.  The idea came to me when I noticed one of my students distracting other kids during independent reading a day earlier.  He had made a bunch of origami and was sharing his creations with other kids.  I sat him down prior to the lesson and asked him if he was comfortable teaching the group how to make paper cranes.  I told him we would have to pretend they were swans, since it’s not “Trumpet of the Cranes”.  I think that using the lesson characterization in a context of a special talent one student can share and teach others was a really fun thing to do.  Also, everyone hit the mark in explaining character traits.  Now we can use this knowledge to help us discover themes.

 Poster from beginning of lesson