Character Sheets for Books/Short Stories

[beccasmith]

As a writer one of things I learned to do when I first started creating characters was to create a full character profile for that character. I find when I'm reading I tend to do something similar in my head for main characters as a way of getting to know them.


I think this can be very helpful for students to do with characters, especially if they are having a hard time remember facts about that character, but will have to write about them in essays or answer questions about them for a test. For this, you can give students a post reading (or possible during reading) questionnaire for students to fill about important character. This can help the students get to know the character better and organize all of their thoughts in one easy to find place. I have provided a sample that I would use as a basis for writing characters. This kind of questionnaire can be easily adapted depending on the type of story you are reading and the level of the students.

[beccasmith]

This activity could even be expanded into a writing activity where students have to use the questionnaire answers to write a paragraph or two about a specific character. This would be helpful to ensure they are using full sentences and not just answering the questions with a couple of words.

[vabbott2]

Becca,


I was thinking that one thing you could do to make this a little more interactive (perhaps for younger kids) is to have them draw a picture of a character in a scene. Then, another student could write the description based on the picture. When the descriptions are done, they could compare the original idea to the description from another person. It's similar to the telestration-type activity Wonhee and I did for the practice day. It might be best as a brainstorming activity.


Cheers,
Val

[agaldamez]

I really like these lists of questions for adult and child characters. I think that the having older learners write a paragraph based on the answers and younger learners draw a picture are good expansions. I wonder if (some of) these questions could be used when analyzing a character in an existing story.