August 2018

Learning About Characterisation in 5/6

 

In preparation for writing our own narratives, students in years 5 and 6 spent some time investigating how to develop interesting and complex characters. We explored how different authors portray the elements of their characters in their writing. In particular we considered a character’s…

• Personality
• Appearance
• Likes and Dislikes (Opinions)
• Relationships
• Habits/Hobbies/Job

We examined a number of different characters in a variety of texts, using our inferencing skills to make judgements about the above elements of character. I think our favourite was analysing the character of Grandma from ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ by Roald Dahl.

        

After studying these different characters it was our turn to develop a character of our own. We used a character profile worksheet to identify all the different elements of character we had examined in earlier lessons, establishing what our character’s liked, their relationships, their habits and hobbies or if they had a job. Finally, we drew a portrait of our characters.

Many students went on to use these characters in our narratives for the Belle Vue Book Awards. We were excited to share with the class the beginnings of these narratives; and it was an excellent opportunity to receive some constructive feedback.