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Lesson Planet
How well do your learners really know the characters in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising? A biopoem activity prompts readers to investigate the characters and their traits. Line by line, writers add the characters' relatives, preferences, fears, and desires.
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CCSS:
Adaptable
Concepts
Additional Tags
Instructional Ideas
- Use the biopoem format for any short story or novel
- Have class members fill out the biopoem for themselves first, and then for the characters from the novel
- Encourage learners to read their poems aloud without any character names, and prompt group members to guess the identity of the character
Classroom Considerations
- The font for the title of the lesson, an all caps script, is difficult to read
Pros
- Format is versatile for any unit
- A great Back-to-School activity
- Allows kids to see characters in a new and creative light
Cons
- Example for the biopoem is from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which middle school learners may not be familiar with, making the example not as helpful as it could be