Analyze Character with Costume Design

Switch up the mundane "character trait, textual evidence, explanation" by asking your students to adapt to book into a movie set on their campus. Students act as costume designer and have to use character traits and symbolism to hit on keep traits, motivations, relationships, and themes.

Students responded very positively to this assignment. I had a lot of kids telling me both in person and via the Edmodo login that it was fun.

Sample from a student's analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

One way I would modify it in the future is request student use at least one piece of textual evidence per slide.

Lit Analysis Gamifiction with Make Dice Lite

What is Make Dice Lite?

Make Dice Lite in an iPad that allows the user to customize dice and use up to 6 at a time. To roll the dice, students can tap the screen or shake the iPad.

Lit Analysis Set Up

In groups of three to 4, students use 1 iPad to create two dice. The first die is whatever literary elements you want your students to analyze. I use character, conflict, symbol, theme, connect two topics, setting.

The second die is one about thematic topics. Examples from The Outsiders: violence, family, loyalty, redemption, social pressure, equality, etc. (Students can choose their own).

Roll the Die

Students roll the dice and create a question with those two things. Provide question stems or example for the different literary elements. EX:

Theme: What is the lesson we are supposed to learn about ______?

Symbol: What object in the text represents _____?

Setting: How does the setting contribute to the lesson we can learn about ______?

Two topics: How are _____ and _____ related?

For character and conflict, it so much depends on the topic I encourage my students to come up with their own way of asking. 

Gamification

Students number off A, B, and C. Students then complete to answer questions. Students take turn answering the question and give text support. For each question, 1 participant answers it and gives support. The other two people then rate the answer with evidence and explanation on a scale of 1-3. The person who answered the question get the combined score. The other group members can each get 1 bonus point for providing approved additional evidence. 

EX: How is setting related equality?

Student A: Tulsa is divided east and west in the novel. The rich Socs are on one side and the poor Greasers on the other, which keeps them separated and continues the idea that by being separated, they aren't able to take down the walls that divide them. If they got to know each other more, the inequality may not create hate. 

Student B: that was really good, I give a 3 out of 3.

Student C: I'm not clear on the theme you think Hinton has about equality so I say 2.

**Student A gets 5 points**

Student B: another thing that supports what you said as an answer is the setting of the dive-in. At the drive in the Socs get to sit in their cars while the greasers have to be out in the elements of the bleachers. 

*** student B gets a point ***

Student C: The school setting also supports that. Remember when Ponyboy talked about how he was in the more advanced classes? He pulled out a knife to dissect a frog and a Soc girl who was his lab partner was horrified. The way there is that divide in the classes at school also makes there be a divide int he social classes. 

*** Student C gets a point. It is now student B's turn to answer a question and try to get the three points ***

Creative Writing with Substance

Giving students an opportunity to write fiction is an important and empowering experience. Too often personal narrative, persuasive, and expository trump all other forms of writing in our classrooms. Meanwhile, we read multiple short stories and novels – all examples of creative narratives that we analyze and exalt. Having student analyze fiction, but not create it runs the risk of sending students a terrible message: the fiction they could write is inferior and not worth creating.

In order for students to really understand why authors do what they do, students must take on the role of the author. Good readers read as writers. When deciding the parameters of a creative writing assignment, I look to my reading standards, not just writing.

Pre-writing plays a key role:

Theme: Get short stories with substance by asking students to find an inspirational quotation on http://www.quotationspage.com/  and then create a plot that proves the theme to be true. Model an example, create plot charts, and let students conference just on the plot charts and ideas so they can refine and get feedback.

Character: By creating innovative and realistic characters, student practice characterization. Character profiles, like the one over at National Novel Writing Month’s teacher resources packet, gives students the scaffolding they need to flesh out their ideas. Use my lesson on the coronation scene from Frozen to help show students the versatility of dialogue.

Symbol: My students were really struggling with analyzing symbols. I wanted them to see symbols from the other point of view, as the author. I modeled with my own story – a stunning narrative that involved Brad Pitt buying me flowers.

Stage directions: This year, our district moved drama unit into the same grading period as our narrative reading and writing units, so I took this as an opportunity to change the short story to a script. Capitalizing on the standards for our grade level that asks students to analyze stage directions, we looked at models and students used them to establish characterization and symbols.

What’s more, the kids have fun! The creative process is engaging. Students are energized. The testing genres are killing our kids. They have voices and characters and worlds ready to be unleashed! Creative writing opens the doors to those worlds and lets kids speak through their characters.

Character Relationship Foldable with Textual Evidence for A Midsummer Night's Dream:

This foldable can easily be adapted for any novel, but fits perfectly with Act 1, scene 1 of Midsummer. So much of a character's motivation is rooted in how he/she feels about other characters, so exploring those relationships - particularly in this play - provides analysis of character motivation and how that fits into character decisions and contributes to the conflict. At the end of the text, refer back to the foldable to see how the relationships evolve. Students could easily select one evolved relationship of their choosing and then explain the evolution in a mini-essay with textual evidence. 

Short answer question: After finishing the text, go back and examine the Character Relationship Foldable. Which relationships remained the same? Which evolved? Select one of the relationships that evolved and in an essay - using textual evidence of course! - explain how the characters originally felt about each other, why their feelings changed, and what those end feelings were.