Practicing character goals, motivation, and obstacles in literature circles

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Identify character goals, motivation, and obstacles in their literature circle books.
• Evaluate the reaction their characters have towards the obstacles they face.

Procedure

1. Do Now: In the reading workshop section of their notebooks, students will answer the following question - "If you could remove one obstacle from your life, what would it be and why?"

2. We will review our work from yesterday regarding goals, motivations, and obstacles.

3. Students will receive a copy of today's literature circle group work and we will review it. (The worksheet asks them to identify three characters, goals, motivations, obstacles, reactions to the obstacles, and their evaluation of the reactions to the obstacles - a copy is here http://timfredrick.pbwiki.com/f/character+motivation+group+worksheet.doc .)

4. Students will be broken up into their new groups, given role cards, and worksheets and will work for the rest of the period.

5. Students will write in response to the following reflection question in their reading workshop section: "How good is the main character in your book with handling the obstacles he/she faces?"

Assessment

• How well do students identify the terms for the characters in their book?
• How well do they evaluate the reactions to obstacles?
• Are they able to generalize about the character and write a statement about his/her effectiveness handling obstacles?

Questions or comments about this lesson plan? Email me at tim.fredrick@nyu.edu