1. Character-A-Palooza:
Deepening Understanding of Characters Week 1

2. Learner Objectives: As a result in learning, students will be able to:
Identify character interactions within a text.
Describe interactions between characters using evidence from the text.

3. Essential Questions: Describe how these two characters are the same.
How are they different?
Can you tell me the reasons why you think the characters are the same and/or different?
Show where you linked your thinking to the text.

4. Vocabulary:
character: the people, animals, or inanimate objects that appear in a story
event: the action that occurs in the story
interaction: the actions between or among two or more people, ideas, events, or concepts
relationship: the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.

5. Compare and Contrast Characters: Let’s Dig Deeper
The characters are the people or animals in a story.
Characters in a story affect one another with their words and actions.
Analyzing a story can help you describe and understand the interaction between characters and their relationships.
Story clues should also indicate what the characters say and do, what happens as the result of their actions, and how the characters change.

6. To understand how characters interact in a story, it helps to first understand the individual characters.
You can do this by listing a character’s qualities, such as their traits, actions, and thoughts.
One way to organize this information is to create a chart of important characters and to then list details about each character.
After you’ve looked at each character’s qualities, you can compare and contrast them.
This will help you understand the relationship between characters better.

7. How are the characters alike in this story? How are they different?
How characters interact tells you a lot about their relationship.
For example, two characters who constantly argue probably aren’t best friends.
In stories, sometimes how characters interact can help lead to a change within one or more character.