Other
Building Characters With Adversity
Extensive and very interesting article advising the reader on how to develop characters through adversity.
Other
Steilacoom Historical School District No. 1: Dramatic Justice [Pdf]
In this instructional activity unit, young scholars investigate how justice is perceived and addressed in different cultures and times by examining literature from around the world. Texts examined include: The Tragedy of Romeo and...
CPALMS
Cpalms: Five Little Monkeys: Comparing and Contrasting
[Free Registration/Login Required] Five little monkeys sitting on a bed or sitting in a tree? In this close reading lesson, students will compare and contrast the actions of the characters in two of Eileen Christelow's beloved books,...
TES Global
Tes: Commedia Dell'arte: Prompt Cards for Practical Work
[Free Registration/Login Required] Two slideshows on Commedia Dell'Arte. Includes character cards, each with a picture of the character and a short description, and dramatic form cardss, also with pictures and explanations. The latter...
CommonLit
Common Lit: Excerpt From Peter Pan: "When Wendy Grew Up"
CommonLit.org is a wonderful resource to use in a Language Arts classroom. Each story or article is accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. In addition, students can click on words to see...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Imagery (English Iii Reading)
In this lesson, students will learn how writers use words that allow them to create pictures in their heads. When a writer uses sensory details or words that appeal to our senses, then we are able to use our senses and our memory to...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Analyze the Central Characters in Literary Text/fiction
In this lesson, students will learn some ways that writers reveal the complexity of their characters. By closely analyzing one author's characters, they will come to see how their words, actions, and interactions with one another can...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Analyze Development of Plot Through Characters in Literary Text
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Often characters are a driving force behind the plot. In this lesson, students will learn how complex, multilayered characters contribute to the development of a story's plot...
Read Works
Read Works: Lesson 1: Actions
In this resource, students will practice identifying and describing the actions of a character. Teachers will model these skills through the use of text and pictures from the story No, David! by David Shannon. Students will then draw a...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Speaking and Listening: Collaborative Conversations
Learners will partner read The Kite, by Alma Flor Ada. Then work together in small collaborative groups to describe the character of the mother, the children, or the kitten. Included in this lesson are video demonstrations, printable...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Who's at the Door? Use Images to Find Out!
Students will use words acquired through reading to describe images (with adjectives) that demonstrate an understanding of characters in a story. The teacher will read Miss Nelson is Back which has great descriptors and will hold a class...
Georgia Department of Education
Ga Virtual Learning: Medieval Diary Multimedia Project [Pdf]
This is a two-page PDF of the instructions for a Medieval Diary Multimedia Project. Students choose a character from an Arthurian legend and write a diary as the character. It provides instructions, topics for discussion, format choices,...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Lorraine Hansberry: "A Raisin in the Sun": Analyzing Theme
In this interactive lesson, discover how literary techniques like setting, characterization, and conflict contribute to the overarching theme of a text. Through analysis of Lorraine Hansberry's iconic play A Raisin in the Sun, explore...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Novel Reflections on the American Dream
This is a collection of five videos of Novel Reflections on the American Dream including Fitzgerald's Gatsby, Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," Ann Petry's "The Street," and Gish Jen's "Traditional American."
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: So Much Character! How Characters Help to Develop Theme
A module to practice skills that will identify how characterization helps the development of theme in a literary work.
British Library
British Library: Wilde's the Importance of Being Earnest: A Close Reading
For this lesson, students will consider several aspects of Oscar Wilde's most popular of comedies, "The Importance of Being Earnest". The success of this play is in part due to its examination of moral principles - in this case, the...
British Library
British Library: Bronte's Jane Eyre: The Figure of Bertha Mason
This activity will encourage students to explore the character of Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester's first wife, through the lens of medical history. They will compare Charlotte Bronte's presentation of the character with the perspectives...
British Library
British Library: Bronte's Wuthering Heights: Who Is Heathcliff?
This activity involves an exploration of the notoriously multifaceted character of Heathcliff, drawing on a range of sources that include the visual, literary, and historical. Students will reflect on Emily Bronte's depiction of...
British Library
British Library: Bronte's Wuthering Heights: Fantasy and Realism
Students will consider the two elements of fantasy and realism that combine to create the compelling narrative in Wuthering Heights (1847). In this activity, students will explore the significance of nature within the narrative, its...
British Library
British Library: Dickens's Great Expectations: The Gothic, the Uncanny
This activity will introduce the idea of the uncanny and explore its expression within the narrative form of Charles Dickens's novel "Great Expectations".
British Library
British Library: Dickens's Great Expectations: Social Mobility
This instructional activity will explore this theme of social mobility through a reading of extracts from Samuel Smiles's Self-Help (1859), the handbook that many young men in 19th-century Britain turned to in seeking advice as to how to...
British Library
British Library: Dickens's a Christmas Carol: Poverty, Money and Miserliness
In this activity, students will consider the economic and political context that informs Charles Dickens's famous novella, A Christmas Carol.
British Library
British Library: Austen's Emma: Social Realism & the Novel
In the course of the novel's development, Jane Austen was a significant contributor to the emergence of the modern novel as we know it today. The review of Emma in the Quarterly Review (October 1815) makes clear to a modern audience how...
British Library
British Library: Teaching Resources: Milton: Crime & Punishment in Paradise Lost
Through exploring characterization and setting in Paradise Lost, students will reflect on how transgressive actions and their consequences are presented, with particular reference to Books I, II, IX, and X. Included in this lesson plan...