• Keyboarding

• Drag and drop

• Text Editing

• Teacher selected texts

  1-3 short

  1 long, such as a novel

• Character Change Graphic Organizer from ReadWriteThink

• Highlighters

• Character observation notes (make a copy) or Notebook paper

• Powtoon Animation Website

Activity 1

1. Print the character change graphic organizer from ReadWriteThink and distribute to students.

2. Choose a digital or print short text that is grade level appropriate and distribute to students.

3. If using printed text, provide students with highlighters.

4. After reading, choose one character, likely the main character, as the focus for the graphic organizer.

5. As a class, discuss characteristics of the character at the beginning and end of the story.

6. Ask students to identify text that supports these descriptions and, if possible, to highlight the text.

7. Using this as a basis for analysis, complete the organizer with a more specific description of how the character changed and why.

8. Repeat this activity with multiple short texts until students are comfortable.

Activity 2

This activity will be more beneficial if completed with a novel where there are more characters to analyze. However, it can be completed with any text, depending on the time you have to devote to the project. Adjust the activity to fit your needs. Other skills can easily be incorporated into the long text, especially if you have chosen a novel.

1. Select a long text, such as a novel.

2. View the Character Observations Notes Google Document and make a copy for yourself. Make any adjustments you wish and then share it with your students, such as through Google Classroom. 

3. Alternately, students can keep notes on notebook paper.

If you choose to have students keep notes on paper, have them make an observation about the character, cite a piece of text to support the observation, and record a chapter and page number.



4. Choose one or more characters for students to focus on as they record observations.

   You may wish to assign a specific character for all students.

   You could also assign  different characters to small groups of students.

   Or, you may assign multiple characters for all students to focus on, depending on your desired outcomes and the chosen text.
   

5. As you read, pause to discuss and allow students to record observations about the character on their organizer or notebook paper.

6. When you have finished the long text, direct students to Powtoon.

Powtoon allows students to make short video presentations. This allows them to use multiple skills, such as keyboarding, text editing and drag and drop. View a Powtoon tutorial in the Videos section of the Digital Skills website

7. You may wish to give a brief overview of how to use the site.  

8. Allow students 1-5 class periods to create a video presentation.

9. Using their observation notes, students can create multiple slides to show how one or more characters have changed during the story.

10. Remind students to include quotations and citations to support their observations.

11. After publishing the Powtoon, students can share a link with you via email, in gClassroom or submitting a link via a Google Form.

***Adjust the presentation requirements to fit your needs.  You can add review skills to the presentation as well, such as the parts of the plot, so that the video covers more aspects of the long text.***

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3
Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution

This simple “Beginning Middle End” chart can be an alternate tool to showing how a character changed during the story.