Character Trait and Motivation Pretest

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Objective

SWBAT identify character traits within themselves as well as a text's character and provide evidence to prove that the given trait is accurate.

Big Idea

Identifying a character's personality traits and motivations helps make deeper connections to a text thus improving comprehension.

Lesson Author

Jody Barnes

Columbus, OH

Grade Level

Third grade

Fourth grade

Fifth grade

Subjects

English / Language Arts

Writing

Reading

Poetry

Standards

RL.4.3

Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions).

RL.4.10

By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Character Trait and Motivation: The Pretest

20 minutes

Reflection: The Data Shows

Today is the pretest to start our unit on character traits and motivation. I know the 3rd grade teachers at my building covered this in depth last year, so I'm hoping for great results on the pretest so I can take what they did and go into more depth especially looking at how a character changes throughout a story, what factors contribute to the change as well as what motivates a character. After studying the state test data for our 4th graders, these are the types of questions that students at our school struggle with.

The text for this lesson comes can be found here. There are questions along with it, but I created my own questions to assess exactly what I wanted to assess. I started with questions that referred to the students describing themselves. If they're not sure what a character trait is then they can at least describe themselves and use that momentum to describe each character in the text. If the students answer with physical characteristics, then I know where to start.

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