Lesson Overview:
In this lesson, students analyze how a character's personality traits, actions and motives influence the plot of a story. Students also learn how storytellers use their face, body, and voice, as well as the five senses, to enhance the telling of a story.
Length of Lesson:
Three 45-minute periods
Notes:
This lesson is particularly suitable for grades 3-4.
Instructional Objectives:
Students will:
- analyze and articulate how personality traits, actions, and motives influence the plot of a story.
- recognize what emotions are being portrayed by characters.
- apply storytelling techniques to add depth to a character.
- respond to how different character traits influence the outcome of a problem in a plot line.
- tell their own stories that relate to the stories of the characters.
- use journal writing to record and reflect on their senses.
- combine storytelling techniques-such as using facial expressions, voice, and gestures-when they tell stories.
Instructional Plan:
Activity One
Tell students they will learn how storytellers use their faces, bodies, and voices to express emotion and enhance the telling of a story. You may wish to practice expressing different emotions with your face and body and asking students to guess which emotion you are expressing.
Share video clips with students that express how storytellers use their faces, bodies, and voices to portray a character with your students and discuss how the woman in the video used her face, body, and voice to express the character of a cat.
Show the video clip of a woman escaping on a boat. Point out how Kuniko Yamamoto uses her body to show setting.
Ask students to select an animal or a character (real or fictional) and use their face, body, and voice to portray that subject. Have the other students guess who, or what, the student is trying to portray. After the students have guessed correctly, ask them to share how they were able to guess the correct answer from body, face and /or voice clues.
Activity Two
In this activity, students will act out a scenario to learn how various character traits, actions, and motivations can influence the plot of a story.
Act out the following scenario for your students:
| Scenario 1 Character:
A shy, young boy or girl
Setting: A school bus
Problem: The boy has a puppy in his backpack that wants to bark.
Outcome: The boy feeds the puppy his lunch to keep him quiet. |
After you have told the story, invite students to tell the story from the point of view of one of the other characters listed below, and create a different outcome based on the new character, such as:
- a mean bully
- a conscientious bus driver
- a student who is terrified of dogs
After a few students finish different versions of the scenario, discuss the following:
- How did each character's qualities, actions, and motivations change the outcome of the story?
- How did the storyteller's movements, gestures, voice, and expressions help develop the character?
Repeat Activity 2 with the following fictional scenario:
| Scenario 2
Character: A shy young boy or girl
Setting: The scenario takes place outside of an alien spacecraft
that is waiting for clearance from the mother planet to take off into
space.
Problem: Imagine that during an outdoor nature class in nearby
woods, aliens have borrowed your teacher. They want to take her back to
their planet to teach their children about the earth’s flora and
fauna.
|
After you have modeled portraying the character of the shy young boy or girl, ask students to retell the story from the point of view of the characters below:
- a habitual liar
- a clever, resourceful student
- a student who is afraid of everything
- classroom troublemaker
Activity Three
In this activity, students will learn about the importance of using our senses to help make characters come alive when telling stories.
Involve students in a discussion about how using the senses can help bring a character to life. Write these words on the board: smell, sound, touch and sight. Say the phrases below one at a time and ask students to quickly jot down short descriptions of the person who comes to mind when they hear each phrase. After all of the phrases have been read, ask students to use their faces, bodies, and voices to dramatize the content.
- to denote the sense of smell:"my younger brother smelling of sweat and sandbox dirt at the end of the day"
- to denote the sense of sound:"my father falling asleep in front of the television and snoring so loudly that he wakes himself up"
- to denote the sense of touch:"the school nurse putting that stuff that stings on my scraped knee"
- to denote the sense of sight:"the old man with the cane who is so bent over that his upper body is parallel to the ground"
Teacher Note: For this activity, you may want to bring in some sample objects that appeal to the senses.
Tell students that they are going to spend one or two days writing in a "Senses Journal." Ask students to divide the journal into four sections and ask them to spend several days recording examples of daily encounters with people as they relate to these four senses. Provide time for students to share one of their favorite entries each day. At the end of the three days, ask students to select one of the people from their entries and describe that person to the class.
Activity Four
In this activity, students will study character and character development as it relates to a literary work and a personal story.
Teacher Note: This lesson uses Richard Peck's book, A Long Way from Chicago; however, this activity could be completed using a variety of stories. Just replace Grandma Dowdel's name with a character from the story of your choice.
A Long Way from Chicago is an enjoyable, sometimes outrageous book about what happens when two kids make their annual trek from Chicago to spend time with their eccentric grandmother in rural Illinois. Each chapter tells the story of a different summer spent with their Grandma Dowdel who is as "old as the hills," and "tough as an old boot."
Select some of the stories from A Long Way from Chicago to share with your students. After reading some of the stories, have students create a character sketch of Grandma Dowdel by responding to the Grandma Dowdel Character Sketch handout.
After the students have completed the character sketch, have students choose one of the stories and retell it from Grandma Dowdel's perspective. Remind students that they are the tellers of the story, and that while they are telling the story from Grandma Dowdel's perspective, they may include their own reactions to the story. To illustrate this point, share the video clip in which storyteller Kuniko Yamamoto tells the story of her grandmother. Point out how she switches between herself and her grandmother.
The reading of Grandma Dowdel's stories will undoubtedly trigger personal stories from your students. Pair students and have them take turns telling their stories to their partners. After each student has finished telling his/her story, the listener will answer the questions on the Listener's Response handout and discuss the answers with the student storyteller. After students have practiced telling their stories, have them share their stories with the class.
Assessment:
Assess student performance using the Listener's Response handout.
Extensions:
Create a class quilt based on the stories the students told. Have each student design a square to represent his or her story. The quilt can be made out of cloth, paper or created in a software program and posted on the Internet.
Sources:
Print:
- Peck, Richard. A Long Way from Chicago. London: Puffin Books, 1998.
Authors:
-
Bay Breeze Ed. Resources, Educational Resource
Bay Breeze Educational Resources, Inc.
Greenville, NH
