Mentor Monday Linky 3/10/14: Character Analysis

I am linking up again with Emily from The Reading Tutor/OG for Mentor Monday.  First of all, I want to congratulate Emily and her family who brought home a beautiful baby girl this week!  I am sure she is staying busy with her young twins as well as this new bundle of joy!

This week's topic is analyzing characters.  What does that mean?  Well, to me, it means noticing how characters change throughout a text.  What lessons have the learned?  How have the changed from the beginning to the end?  Sometimes, this means the reader has to make several inferences while other times the author is very specific on how the character has changed.

To teach characterization to my kiddos, I love to use the Grace books.  Grace is such a fun character and the kids can usually relate to her.  For today's post, I am going to focus on Amazing Grace.  In this book, Grace's creativity and love of fantasy comes to life.  The author shows us how much Grace loves stories and acts them out all of the time.  When her class decides to put on a play of Peter Pan, Grace wants to be Peter Pan, but gets discouraged by classmates who tell her she can't be Peter because she is a girl and she is black.  Grace lets that get to her for awhile, but her grandmother helps her to see that she can do anything she puts her mind to!  By analyzing her character throughout the book, kids can see the author's purpose as well as the lesson that Grace learned.  Here is a graphic organizer I have filled in to show how Grace changed during the book.  You can grab this freebie (blank, color and black/white available) from my store by clicking here.  

How do YOU teach character analysis in your classroom?  I can't wait to hear!

Until next time,