Characters

Characters… are the people in a story may also be animals, aliens, creatures, etc. make stories interesting things happen to characters characters do things Perfect place to add pictures.

Think of some characters you know… Peter Pan Cinderella Donald Duck Count Dracula Can you name some others? This dates the product. Also, Harry Potter is not in second and third grade reading materials.

Main Character Stories can have one character or many characters. Usually, a story pays special attention to one character, no matter how many characters are part of the story. This is the main character. Pictures…

Seeing a Character Characters are not real people. Writers use details to help readers imagine, or see, them. These details make the characters seem like real people. Be consistent with punctuation and capitalization across slides. These are all complete sentences and should be punctuated as such.

Physical Details Some details help you imagine what the character looks like. For example, brown hair, blue eyes age 8 male scab on knee tall for his age

Other Details Other details help you know the character better. For example, has older sister named Gertie likes to play basketball has dog named Tony is not afraid of the dark likes to play tricks on sister and her friends

“Please put the cat down,” she said. Dialogue The words the characters speak within a story are called dialogue. These words usually appear in quotes to make them easy to recognize. “Please put the cat down,” she said. You can also learn a lot about a character by the things he or she says.

What can you tell about each character from their words? For example… “Hey you! Get your bike off my lawn!” Pop yelled at the kids. “Excuse me, do you mind if I borrow your umbrella?” the lady asked. What can you tell about each character from their words?

Now you try! Loretta loved to swim and spent most days at the pool where her brother, Pat, worked as a life guard. For hours, Pat would watch Loretta swimming laps. She had more energy than a dolphin. But when Loretta was done, that was it. She’d climb the ladder, shake out her black hair, wrap herself in a towel, and flop down in the sun. Write down all the things you learned about Loretta by reading the previous paragraph.

What did you learn about Loretta? loves to swim has brother named Pat has more energy than a dolphin has black hair Did you learn anything else about Loretta?

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