For the last several weeks we have been learning about character traits and how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges (RL.2.3 for those who heart standards). I couldn't decide exactly the best order to present the standards and that's why I have Laken.....the standard master. We decided that before kiddos can truly seem to grasp lesson and moral of the story they first need to have a deep understanding of the characters.
We began by brainstorming a list of different character traits. This is hard for 2nd graders because they want to stick with simple descriptions such as mean, nice, good, etc. Teaching them new words and synonyms for other words really helped them better describe characters.
I posted our anchor chart on my bulletin board and I loved seeing them refer to it constantly when they tried to describe a character with a word we had not said, or to add something new to their own anchor charts. We started by reading several David Shannon books. These books are hilarious and easily allow ideas to flow about who the character is and how to describe him. The kids LOVE these books because David, the main character, is always causing some sort of wild trouble. We then read numerous Kevin Henkes books. I love his books! Each book has an interesting character that my 2nd graders adored! Each one also had a unique character trait that we had a great time describing. For each story I would make a graphic organizer on chart paper (I have a unhealthy obsession with the use of chart paper...don't judge me) - and then the kids would break off into partners and create their own anchor charts. My very first attempt I tried to get the kids to create their own without a model from me - DISASTER. I have to continuously remind myself to model, model model. The kids are learning from seeing proper examples of what I expect. They NEED to model themselves after me!
As for the kids own "mini charts" as seen below....let me just tell you!!!! Laken and I were spending a random Saturday running all over town looking at books for our classroom, visiting the public library, looking at the poop emoji pillows at the teacher store (truth), and browsing the local dollar tree - and then Laken stopped and looked at the large pad of art paper and I could read her mind!!!! She looked at me and said - Oh my gosh could the kids not use these for miniature chart papers for their OWN anchor charts? And we died right there in aisle 11 of the dollar tree. DIED! So naturally we each bought 10 pads of these things! The kids LOVE them and I let them create their own anchor chart with a partner after I model mine and we do it together.
I have absolutely no idea how I do not have a picture of this.....but later on in this unit when we had a better grasp of character traits we would pause during the reading of the book and brainstorm what was going on with the character during that part of the story. We wrote that in green. We would read the middle and brainstorm more in a different color. We would then read the end and add to our anchor charts in a 3rd color so we could clearly see how the character was changing throughout the story. The standard reads that students need to be able to describe how characters in a story react to major events and challenges. It helped to break the story down into 3 parts and color code our thinking as we read each section. I also think it helped to find a stopping point and write down all that we could think before reading any further in the book. By the end of the week these kiddos could describe characters up and down and tell you how they handled major events during the story. Super proud of their progress and how hard they worked. Lucky for me I think my class loves anchor charts and chart paper as much as I do. Or it could be the smelly markers. We certainly have a thing for smelly markers in my room - but that's another post for another day!
