Title: How to describe a character?

Lesson plan elaborated by: Magdalena Trysińska

Topic:

How to describe a character? About an extraordinary boy from an American novel.

Target group

5th‑grade students of an eight‑year elementary school

Core curriculum

I. Literary and cultural education.

1. Reading literary works. Student:

1) discusses the elements of the world presented

7) discusses plot events, determines the order of events and understands their interdependence

10) distinguishes between the first‑person and third‑person narratives and indicates their functions in the work;

11) indicates the main and supporting characters in the work and determines their traits;

12) defines the theme and topic of the work;

14) names impressions felt after reading the text;

16) defines the experiences of the literary characters and compares them with his/her own;

19) expresses his/her own opinion about characters and events;

20) indicates the values in the work and defines the values that are important for the character.

2. Perception of cultural texts. Student:

2) searches for information that is directly or indirectly expressed in the text;

5) distinguishes between important and secondary information in the text.

II. Language education.

2. Diversity of language Student:

2) uses an official and unofficial style of Polish language;

3) uses a style appropriate to the communication situation.

III. Creation of utterances.

1. Elements of the rhetoric. Student:

1) participates in a conversation on a given topic (...);

3) creates a logical, semantically complete and ordered utterance, using composition and graphic layout appropriate to a given genre form (...);

4) selects the information;

2. Speaking and writing. Student:

1) produces consistent utterances - description;

9) uses his/her language knowledge in his/her utterances.

IV. Self‑study Student:

1) perfects reading quietly and aloud;

2) perfects various forms of recording the information acquired.

The general aim of education

By learning how to describe and characterize characters, the student develops social competences and cultural awareness.

Key competences

• communication in the mother tongue;

• communication in foreign languages;

• learning to learn;

• social and civic competences;

• cultural awareness and expression.

Learning outcomes

Student:

• describes a schoolmate, indicating his/her positive traits;

• distinguishes between positive and negative traits;

• indicates the main character of a literary excerpt;

• selects necessary information from the text;

• describes and characterizes the character of an excerpt from William Wharton's “Pride”;

• Creates a consistent text with Sture's characteristics.

Methods / techniques

• problematic: directed conversation;

• programmed: using an e‑textbook;

• practical: exercises concerned.

Forms of work

• uniform individual activity;

• activity in groups;

• uniform collective activity.

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher defines the purpose of the course, which is to develop the skill of describing and characterizing a character.

2. The teacher divides the students into groups. Each group (in secret) chooses a student from the neighboring group and establishes his/her description, paying attention to positive traits. Next, the groups present their descriptions. Other students have to guess who the person being described is.

Realization

1. The teacher opens the lesson “How to describe a character?” (desktop computers, tablets, projector computers or interactive whiteboard). The students read W. Wharton’s “Pracowitemu wszystko się udaje”.

2. The students do tasks from the abstract related to the content of the read text: they collect information about the main character - determine his age, gender, interests, provide information about his parents (ex. 3 and 4); on the basis of the text decide which traits fit the main character (indicate the relevant fragments of the text - ex. 5), and then draw conclusions about the character described on the basis of the fragments included in ex. 6.

3. The teacher explains that the relationships between the character with other people are also important in the description of the character. The teacher says that the narrator also provides a lot of information about the character. Next, the students do ex. 7 and 8 from the e‑textbook, the aim of which is to develop the skill of searching for information in the text.

Summary

1. The teacher encourages the students to formulate their own assessment of the character. For this purpose, the teacher asks the following questions:

• Which invention impressed them the most?

• Can we say that Sture is a rationalizer?

If necessary, the teacher explains who a rationalizer is.

2. At the end of the lesson, in order to consolidate the information about the character, the students do ex. 10 from the e‑textbook, which is to match the captions to the pictures. In this way, the students create a strip cartoon on the basis of the text they have read during the lesson. This task can also be assigned for homework and treated as an aid in preparing the description of the character.

Homework

At home, the students, using information learned when reading the text and during the lesson, write a composition, in which they are to present Sture (description with elements of characteristics)

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

How to describe a character?

(1925–2008)
An American writer, painter and psychologist. In the 1960s he lived on a barge on the Seine, France together with his family. He wrote for adults. His novels were extremely popular in the 1990s, in particular “Birdy”, “A Midnight Clear” and “Dad”. Some of his books were filmed.