Hi! Two years ago, I taught a lesson in characterization that seemed to work pretty well. About two-thirds of my students were reading "The Girls" by Amy Goldman Koss, which deals with girl-on-girl bullying from the perspective of five different girls involved (the leader, the enforcer, the passive observer, the reluctant participant, the victim). The other third were reading "A Mango-Shaped Space" by Wendy Mass, a sort of coming-of-age novel about a girl who discovers she has synesthesia (and a fantastic book, by the way; highly recommended by nearly all my students who've read it).
Early on in the novels, I made a number of groups with two "The Girls" kids and one "Mango" kid. They were each to choose a character from their book, imagine that the three were sharing a cabin in summer camp, and write and perform a short skit. As I had hoped, they ended up explaining to each other who their characters were and what they were like, while caught up in the creativity of how characters from different books in different worlds would interact, and the skits were both enjoyable and insightful. I suppose this could be adapted even for a pure reading workshop class, with random groups and everyone simply choosing a character from whatever they are reading at the moment. What other ideas are out there?! Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
