Study character development with a lesson from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. After listening to the audio guide from earlier in the unit, kids track Janie's development and changes throughout the novel, noting how...

What characteristics would your class attribute to a hero? Have them explore heroic acts and character development with a lesson from Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying. After discussing a handout, readers decide if small acts can...

How do the main characters of Willa Cather's My Ántonia develop and change throughout the course of the novel? Explore Jim Burden, Ántonia Shimerda, and Lena Lingard toward the end of the novel, comparing their goals and expectations in...

Pair your readers into mother-daughter pairs with an activity from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Each person discusses his or her assigned character's motivations, strengths, weaknesses, and changes. They then examine how the adult...

Read Dangerous Minds with your language learning disabled pupils to identify characteristics and connect to literature. This is a specific activity intended for use with the suggested book. The class uses a character map  as a way to...

Ged, the main character in A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, goes though many changes over the course of the novel. Ask your class to look at his development through the first eight chapters. Pupils discuss Ged's relationship...

In this character development story map worksheet, learners complete a flow chart about a character in a book. Students fill in the name of the character and write how the character feels and acts before and after a character change in...

Students explore the concept of character development. In this character development lesson, students watch a video segment regarding a family's struggle with cancer. Students examine the personality, situation, motivation, and actions...

Watch video clips that illustrate a character's development. Your class can watch video's about a character and her development through a life decision. They then complete a timeline activity for the story.

High schoolers create an advertisement promoting good behavior. This character-development lesson plan from Boys Town High School involves students studying the history of the Got Milk?advertising campaign. After a discussion of...

Animals oftentimes elicit various characteristics which make them symbolic or representative of human feeling, action, or emotion. The class creates horse characters out of clay to show character action and symbolism. This is a great...

Cover character development and indirect characterization in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck with a graphic organizer. Class members search through the text and fill out a box for each character. The activity provides some notes for...

Complete studies of the memorable characters in Richard Peck's novel A Long Way from Chicago. The lesson plan describes three different activities to help your class better understand characters in the story, character development in...

While the main character of The Call of the Wild is Buck the dog, there is a cast of important human characters involved in the story. Ask your learners to take a look at these characters and examine the relationships between the human...

Be proactive. Begin with the end in mind. Synergize. These are just a few strategies outlined in Sean Covey's ground-breaking best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. With a series of five character development workshops...

Second graders draw pictures and create Venn Diagrams to compare the life of two book characters.  In this literature lesson, 2nd graders learn about character development by studying Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. A guest...

Identifying specific writing strategies while reading fiction helps to increase understanding of character development. This handout provides a template on which readers can record examples of figurative language and explain how it...

Delve into narrative writing that puts choice in the hands of the writers. Kids pick their own characters, emotions, items, and places from a list and tie them together in the exposition. Several questions help guide the writers toward...

Whether you are working on a brief story, or sending your class off to compose novels, this resource will be a useful tool for building characters. Writers map out their character by describing looks, characteristics, personality, inner...

Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...

Seventh graders examine words of Greek origin and discuss character development in fiction. They read a list of Greek word parts and create words on a worksheet. Students then read and discuss an informational handout about character...

Develop a mystery character using clues from a bag. This engaging activity will help learners understand character traits. They develop a list of the items from the bag, discuss and develop the character with a partner, and create a...

Through deep class discussion and peer-to-peer collaboration, young novelists begin to create a well-developed character for their narratives. They discuss physical and abstract antagonists, character types, and character traits. This is...

Use this handout to focus on the character traits of George and Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Readers are given a set of specific traits to search for in the first chapter. They are required to list two textual examples of...