Characters

How well do you know the characters that you read about? Third graders are learning that readers think about the characters in their stories. Authors reveal information about characters through what the characters say or do. We have been challenging third graders to identify these characteristics as they read. We expect third graders to provide evidence from the text to support their thinking. For example, we have read "Babushka's Doll" by, Patricia Polacco. Room 221 readers have noticed that the main character, Natasha, is very selfish. We asked them what happened in the text that makes them think that? The children were able to identify events in the text that showed Natasha being selfish.

This afternoon we continued our conversation about characters. Third grade readers learned that characters can change in a story. A character may be different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning. We can use Natasha from "Babushka's Doll" as an example again. Although Natasha was very selfish at the beginning, by the end she became kinder and more patient. (Again the children can support this with evidence from the text - things the character says or does in the story.) The children were also able to identify the cause of the change. In this case, the cause of the change was the grandmother's doll that came to life and acted even worse than Natasha. Natasha got a taste of her own medicine and therefore began to change.

Talk about the characters in the books your read with your third grader. Identify the characteristics and show the evidence you used to figure it out. Ask your third grade reader to describe another character. Together discuss how the characters have changed through the story. Happy reading!