Focus Lesson Planning Sheet

Focus Lesson Topic / Developing Believable Characters- Part 1: Internal/External Characteristics
(adapted from Calkins and Cruz, 2006)

Materials

/ Teacher’s story idea (specifically character ideas) to demonstrate thinking
Anchor chart on Ideas for Fiction created in previous lessons
Developing My Character chart (see below)
Advice for Developing a Character chart, created prior to lesson

Connection

/ The past few days we have been talking about fiction, especially how writers get their ideas for fiction stories. We discussed how many story ideas come from the ordinary small moments of life or from the stories writers wish existed. Refer to previously created chart. We also talked about how writers take a story idea and express it with a bit of detail and not simply as one short sentence. Today we are going to go on with what happens with these great story ideas you are now coming up with.
Explicit Instruction / One of the most important strategies that fiction writers know is that even when you come up with a great story idea, you don’t just start drafting your story right away. Fiction writers know that you need to live with the idea for a little while and rehearse how the story is going to go. This strategy focuses less on planning what will happen in the story and more on bringing to life the characters that will make things happen. One fiction writer once said that you have to know your characters so well that you would know how much change each one has in his or her pocket. You have to know your character’s likes and dislikes, feelings, problems, joys, accomplishments and many other things. You have to know your character’s personality, the good parts and the not-so-good parts. Fiction writers think through and consider all these parts of their characters before they even start writing their stories. They take the time to invent their characters in depth and rein themselves in from thinking about what will happen in the story itself.
Watch how I consider some ideas as I further invent and develop my character. Remember the story idea I had about the girl who had all brothers and no sisters. Use story idea of your own. I’m going to think more about her and her personality. I will collect my ideas on a chart that looks like this (see below). Fill in chart modeling that you are inventing both external and internal characteristics for your character. Focus on the internal traits more than the external. During the Guided Practice, the students will help you with some of the external features. Pause often to reread chart and describe your thought process to the students. Include on the “internal” side of the chart one descriptor that is broad, for example, “sensitive.” Show the students how you would “unpack” this broad descriptor to make it more specific for your character, for example, “easily upset by small things, that most people would just be able to ignore or move past.” Include the specific example on your chart as well. (See below).
Guided Practice / .The most important thing I have to keep in mind is whether or not my character is “believable.” Does she seem like she could be a real person? Do both the internal and external characteristics of my character male sense with what I know about real people and how they act and react?
Now I’d like to get help from you. I have filled in more of the “internal” side of my chart than the “external.” Let’s think more about my character. Talk to your partner about some of the external characteristics that my character might demonstrate, remembering that the internal and external features have to fit together to make the character believable. Before you do this, I want to show you a chart that we will be referring to again and again while inventing our characters and writing fiction. Refer to and read together the chart you created prior to the lesson, Advice for Developing a Character.” (see below)
Allow students some time to talk and then elicit for them some possible external characteristics for the character, including name, bit of a description, age, etc.
Send Off [for Independent Practice] / Today reread through your story ideas. If you have one that you think you’d like to continue with through the writing process, then you should begin developing your character. Make a Developing My Character chart and begin considering and recording the internal and external features of your character. As you begin thinking about what to include on your chart,
Group Share / Have students share how they’ve begun developing their characters.

Example: (create your own based on your story idea)

Developing My Character

External (outside) features / Internal (inside) features
girl
name? / sensitive
can get upset easily by small things which don’t upset most people
10 years old / feels brothers get all the attention
3 brothers, no sisters / wants to do something special to get attention
clothes, other outside components? / a little quiet and shy

Advice for Developing a Character

(anchor chart created prior to lesson)

·  Start with whatever you’ve decided matters to you about your character, based on your story idea. Is he or she like you? Like someone you know?

·  Put together a character so that all the parts fit together into a believable person.

·  Reread often, asking, “Do these different things make sense within one person? Do they fit together in a believable way? Are these traits here for a reason that fits with my story idea?”

·  Open up any broad, general descriptors-words like sensitive- and ask, “What exactly does this word, this feature, mean for this particular character?”

·  If a character seems too good to be true, make the character more complex and more human by asking, “What is the downside of this feature? How does this characteristic help and hurt the character?”

Developing My Character

External (outside) features / Internal (inside) features