What Character!

One skill we are developing is character. Character traits are determined by what a character thinks, says, and does.

As early readers, the authors of books TELL us the character's traits. Curious George and that entire series of picture books with the characters that are different shapes, comes to mind.

As students develop their reading, they get bored with these books. Their brains develop, and they like opportunities where they can stretch and challenge their minds. The more they read, the more connections they make, and readers seek more challenging books.

 One of our first reading strategies we are developing is character traits.

We started with "that character" who visited earlier this week, K.I.Dee. She made poor choices in more ways than we could imagine. 

Ms. Leom's Homeroom's process:

Mr. Greninger's Homeroom's process:

K.I.Dee was "easy" to determine her character traits! We were falling over ourselves to share all the over the top things she said, did, and thought. Once we looked at our clues, it was easy to agree that she was irresponsible, disrespectful, rude, messy, and so much more!!

Students received a "tool". It is a bright pink paper that lists three columns on the front and back of possible character traits. We will keep this paper in our Language Arts folder for the entire year. It is a reading tool we can refer back to to generate ideas.

Then we needed to teach others about character traits. We picked a trait, and we created (paper) t-shits to advertise the different traits.

(See our bright pink / red tool on the board?)

Ms. Leom modeled the expectation. She made a list of the steps, so we could check to make sure we had all the details.

Then we went to work!

Ms. Leom encouraged us to use a dictionary. 

While we worked, Ms. Leom pulled students to her work space to reteach and "polish" our Types of Sentences posters. She wants to post them in the hallway, and wants us to be comfortable to share our thinking (and she REALLY wants us to have feedback and LEARN). Our learning is not about being perfect, never making mistakes, but to begin, to figure out where we don't understand, to receive feedback, to ask questions, and to have on-going learn. It is a process. One we are developing together.

It is a good guess that when we are working on our next learning opportunity, Ms. Leom will be pulling students to individually rework on our character tshirts. 

When ask, "What character?" We are building the character of being a successful learner. It takes time, teamwork, and character.