Character analysis is essential for developing comprehension skills in elementary students. By analyzing characters’ traits, actions, and motivations, readers deepen their understanding and enjoyment of reading. Here are some engaging characters analysis activities that can be used during whole group minilessons, small group instruction, or literacy centers.
What Is Character Analysis?
Character analysis involves examining the traits, motivations, and development of characters in a story. It requires readers to look beyond the surface and think about why characters behave the way they do, how they change throughout the story, and what they contribute to the overall narrative. This deeper understanding helps students connect with the text on a personal level and enhances their overall reading experience.
Why is Character Analysis Important?
Character analysis activities enhance reading comprehension in several ways:
- Improves Comprehension: By analyzing characters, students can better understand the plot, themes, and conflicts in a story.
- Enhances Critical Thinking: It encourages students to think critically about motivations, relationships, and changes in characters.
- Encourages Empathy: Understanding characters’ feelings and perspectives can foster empathy and social-emotional learning.
- Promotes Engagement: Engaging with characters makes reading more enjoyable and meaningful for students.
Whole Group Character Analysis Activities
These whole group character analysis activities can be used with any fiction text to explicitly teach the reading comprehension skill to your students.
Character Traits
Character traits are a perfect way to expand students’ vocabulary. Create a chart listing character traits from a class read-aloud, adding evidence from the text to support each trait. Use a sentence stem to frame your thinking:
“The character is (trait) because (text evidence).”
Some fun ways to introduce character traits is by labeling familiar characters! Have the students record your traits on a sticky note and post them on you. Or have them record traits of their favorite Disney characters!
You’ll also want to address the difference between inside/outside character traits.
- Inside Traits – What character thinks/feels, their personality
- Outside Traits – What we see, physical characteristics
Character Connections
Find opportunities for students to make connections to the characters. Maybe a character reminds them of someone in their lives. Maybe they have experienced a challenge similar to the conflict the character overcame. By making these personal connections to the characters, it will deepen their understanding of the story.
Role Playing
Character Charades: Have students act out scenes to explore characters’ feelings in a dynamic way. While students act, the other students record their observations. These specific details should include what the actor’s body, face, and voice are doing which helps add details about characters in their own stories they write.
Visualizing Characters
Read character descriptions without showing the picture. Have students draw how they visualize the character based on the descriptions. Compare students’ drawings and discuss why the author described the character in a certain way.
Character Changes
Model how to identify how a character changes from the beginning to the end of the story and the significance of these changes. These changes may be how the character is feeling, their actions, or their motivations. Students can orally retell or write down character changes from the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
Authors Purpose
Students can analyze why the author included certain details about the character. Model how to determine why the author used certain details to describe a character’s words, thoughts, and actions. Record observations on a character analysis anchor chart. Why is it important for us to know how that character is feeling? How do their words, feelings, thoughts, or actions impact the story?
Small Group Character Analysis Activities
These character analysis activities are ideal for students to do collaboratively during literacy centers or your small group instruction.
Small Group Strategy Card
It can be helpful to keep a strategy cheat sheet with character analysis prompts that you can use with any text. Keep this list at your small group table as a reference tool during reading instruction.
Character Dice Mats
After reading a story together during small group instruction, students can use a literacy dice mat. They roll the dice and answers the character analysis question that matches the number that they rolled.
Fluency Practice
Analyzing characters’ emotions is a fun and engaging way to improve students’ reading fluency! After identifying how a character is feeling, students can practice reading a quote from the character to reflect the character’s emotions. Plus, it’s a really fun way to practice expressive reading.
This simple character literacy center encourages students to read a short scenario and think about how the character is feeling. They practice reading a sentence in a voice that reflects the character’s feelings.
Guess Who Game
During literacy centers, students can play Guess Who together. This allows them to practice ways that authors may describe characters. Students can record descriptions in their writing journal to add to their stories.
Students can also create their own game cards. They can draw their own characters on blank index cards to have a partner guess the character.
Independent Reading Practice
The ultimate goal of our reading minilessons and small group instruction is for students to be able to independently implement the strategies. Once you have explicitly taught and provided guided practice, students can practice the skills during independent reading with these character analysis activities.
Reading Response Prompts
Students can respond to these prompts in their readers’ notebooks. The prompts can be applied to any fiction book a student is reading independently:
- Draw your favorite character. Use a speech bubble to show something the character might say.
- Would you want to be the character’s friend? Why or why not?
- Why is the main character like or unlike you?
- When did you face a problem in your life like one faced by the character?
- How did the character change or grow from the beginning to the end?
- What would happen to the character in a sequel to the book?
Character Analysis Bookmarks
Students can keep a Character Analysis Reading Bookmark in their book boxes to remind them of the strategy during independent reading.
Character Analysis Graphic Organizers
Have students complete character analysis graphic organizers as they’re reading. They can record character traits & emotions, how characters change throughout the story, as well as the character’s words, thoughts, and actions.
Synonyms for Character Emotions
While student read independently, they can record synonyms used for common character emotions. These lists will serve as a word bank to add more descriptive details in their writing.
Show, Don’t Tell Strategy
As students are reading, they can record details authors use to describe how a character is feeling. They can pay attention to what the character’s body, face, and voice is doing. These Show Don’t Tell Strategy notes will also allow them to add more details to their own writing.
Cross-Curricular Activities
Character Analysis is not just a reading strategy. Students can analyze characters in other subject areas as well.
Analyzing Characters in Social Studies
Students can analyze historical figures as characters, discussing their traits, motivations, and impacts on history. This will help students better understand the motives behind and significance of the actions these historical figures took.
Character Analysis in Writing
Encourage students to create their own characters in stories, thinking deeply about their traits and development. Look at mentor texts to identify how authors show how a character feels or how an author like Mo Willems can make his characters funny and memorable.
Incorporate characters’ emotions using the Show, Don’t Tell Writing Strategy. This encourages students to add details that TELL that reader how the character is feeling versus just explicitly stating how they feel. Find out more about this strategy and other ways to use emotions to enhance writing.
Additional Resources for Analyzing Characters
You may want to check out analyzing characters strategies and tools or these resources for additional ideas on teaching character analysis:
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