Making Inferences About Character

During the week before Winter Break, and all this week, we have been working on the strategy of making inferences about character. In December, students completed a character web, describing characteristics of the protagonist in their novel, and providing evidence of these characteristics. We discussed that inferences come from looking at what characters SAY, what characters DO, and what characters THINK. If we pay attention to those clues in the text, and we use the background knowledge we have about people, we can make informed conclusions about these characters. This week, we read a story called "Act of a Hero" and we reviewed inference making, using the character George as our focus. Next week, we will have a quiz on inference making about characters, where students will demonstrate their ability to make accurate, supported inferences about a character in a story they read in class.

Character and Conflict in Literature

We have been working on analyzing some of the elements of fiction for the past few classes. Two classes ago, we read the short story "Time Transfixed," and we applied the following elements of fiction to the story: protagonist, antagonist, external conflict, internal conflict and theme. We are going to begin analyzing these components in our novels, before Winter Break, and then after Winter Break, students will be given their final project to complete, related to their novel.

News Article Titles and Photo Captions

Today, we spent some time talking about how to write news article titles, and how to write captions for photos. I gave the class three story scenarios, and their job was to create a news article headline for each. We spoke about how headlines are catchy, short, and sometimes even sentence fragments (not a complete sentence). We discussed that many titles often use alliteration, or rhyme, or puns to grab the reader's attention. My favourite headline from the examples today: "A Dog-Gone Reunion!" Soooo punny! We then wrote captions for two sample photos, one of the Kinder Morgan stand off, and one of Henrik Sedin celebrating a goal. We talked about the importance of being clear in the description of what is happening in the photo, and to remain objective in our description. We also indicated that it is important to identify key people in the photo, if possible. Finally, we finished reading "Communication" and came up with a couple more inferences about Ryan's character. Students were given a blank character web and asked to begin making inferences about a character from their novel. We will practice inference making using our books, and then I will test you on this skill in the coming weeks. Please let me know if you need help making inferences about a character in your book.

Analyzing Character in Literature

Today, students were given the first 20 minutes of class to either silently read their novel, or complete their news article rough draft. Rough drafts need to be submitted to me before Friday. Please come see me on Thursday anytime between 1 pm and 3 pm if you would like to finish up your news article draft with my help. We then worked through the first part of the story "Communication," with a goal of analyzing the protagonist, Ryan. We discussed that in order to make inferences about his character, we needed to pay attention to what he says, what he does and what he thinks. Those text clues, combined with what we know of people's behaviour, will help us make informed INFERENCES about Ryan's character. We began to fill out the character web (handout is on this blog, if you missed class), with some of the traits we thought fit Ryan's character, including the text evidence which led us to those conclusions. We will complete the character web in class on Monday.

News Article Rough Draft

We began class today with voting for the Cariboo Reads books for this year. Thank you so much for your input! Hopefully a couple of our class favourites get chosen.... Today's class was dedicated to completing our rough draft of the newspaper article. Remember that you are allowed to write your article on any topic you wish. You could choose a real-life event, or you could create something entirely fictional. Use the handout I gave you today to write your draft, sketch a photo and create a caption. We will type up the final copy of our article on the 26th. Keep the following criteria in mind as you write your draft: - write a lead paragraph that includes the 5 Ws - remain objective throughout (no opinions) - include facts (at least three) - include quotations (at least two) If you need help structuring your news article, go to a newspaper for help! Check out the front page stories, and use those as a model for this assignment. Good luck!

First Impressions

Today, students were asked to complete a worksheet titled, "First Impressions," in order to give me some sense of how they are interacting with the novel they have chosen to read. Students are being asked to ask questions, make inferences about character, make mental pictures, and connect personally and to other texts, in order to push their thinking in different ways. If you did not submit your First Impressions page to me today, please do so on Friday. There is a link to the handout here on the blog, if you've lost yours, or you were away. Next class, we will be forging ahead with our news articles. Students are going to write fictional news stories, about an event of their own creation. We have studied the features of news articles, and now we are going to put all the parts together to create our own, amazing stories.

Novels have been chosen!

On Friday, I returned the persuasive paragraphs that students wrote last week, and we added them to our work portfolios. We will continue to develop our paragraph writing skills, as the year progresses. Students then listened to "book talks" given by me, about the eight possible novels to choose from for our novel study unit. Students chose their top three picks, and I distributed novels to the students. We spent the final fifteen minutes of class reading silently. It was wonderful. Please remember to bring your book with you to every class, as I will ask you to interact with it in some way, every day.