Name _______________________

Lesson on Reading and Visualizing Character

Lesson Components
What teacher and student behaviors are planned and expected

Comments/Notes/
in Retrospect
Reflections

Context:
English 7 Honors
20-30 minutes
Around 17 students

Virginia SOL(s):
l) Use reading strategies to monitor comprehension throughout the reading process.

My CI wanted us to help
students use reading
strategies for the
upcoming SOLs.

Common Core State Standard(s):

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.7.1
Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says
explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Objectives (KUD format):

Understand:
1.) Students will understand that visualization is important to reading.
Know:
2.) Students will know how to illustrate characters based on the characters
descriptions.
3.) Students will know the connection between the exterior and interior lives of the
characters.
Do:
4.) Students will be able to illustrate characters based on the characters
descriptions.
5.) Students will be able to summarize the connection between the exterior and
interior lives of the characters.

Assessments: Methods for evaluating each of the specific objectives listed above.
Diagnostic: Students will demonstrate what they already know about visualizing a
character by underlining the physical attributes of a character from a short story.
(KUD 1, 2, 4).
Formative: Students will show their progress toward the relationship between the
inner and outer lives of the characters by writing a 1-2 sentence summary of the
character and his or her attributes. (KUD 3, 5)

I tried to focus on
having the students
draw from the text in
creating their pictures
and summaries.

Name _______________________

Students will show what they know about visualizing character inner and outer lives
by creating a comic or graphic novel excerpt about a passage from a short story.
(KUD 1, 2, 3, 4)
Summative: Students will ultimately be assessed (today or in a future lesson) on
these standards by...

Procedures: Detail student and teacher behavior. Identify possible student

misconceptions. Include:
I.
Welcome/greeting/announcements
Hi everyone. Hope you all have had a good week so far.
II.

Hook/ bridge/ opening to lesson

[Have student pass out worksheets]

The students seemed to

like the drawing exercise
and a few of them really
wanted to share their
drawings with the class.
There was one drawing
that more slightly offtopic, so I did not share
that with the class.

So today we are going to talk about character and how we can use clues in the text to
discover something about a persons character. The first important thing we are
going to focus on is visualizing the character that we encounter when we read. And I
think the best way to do this is to actual draw the characters that we read about. So
lets take this first paragraph that we see here.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching,
grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which
no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an
oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled
his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out
shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows,
and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced
his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

[While reading, I point out that grindstone is a machine that shapes stone, and flint is
a type of mineral or rock. Gait also refers to the way a person walks]. So does anyone
recognize where this is from?
Student 1: The Christmas Carol!
Yes, its from The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. But even if you already know
the story, just try to look closely at the detail that you see in this paragraph. What I
would like you to do now is underline all of the descriptions that give you a sense of
what Scrooge looks like. For example, I might underline eyes red because that gives
you a sense of what he looks like. So please take about a minute to do this.
[I go around to help students if they seem like they need it.]
Okay so what did you all come up with for your physical descriptions?
Possible student answers: grasping, hard and sharp, old features, pointed

The students picked up

on physical features
pretty well.

Name _______________________
nose, shriveled cheek, stiffened gait, red eyes, thinning blue lips, frosty
rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin
Okay so what I would like you to do now is take a minute a draw and picture of
Scrooge directly based upon the features that we have pointed out. Also include any
other details that you see in this passage.
[Students take a minute to draw their pictures. I go around to look at how theyre
doing. After a minute, I stop them and then bring up a picture of Scrooge from the
movie on the Smart Board. I point out some of the physical features we have talked
about. ]
Okay, all of your drawings look great. So here is a picture of Scrooge from the latest
Christmas Carol movie. What I want us to think about now is how Scrooges exterior
physical appearance, expressions, or gestures relate to his inner character. This is an
important reading skill for when you encounter a character in reading and are trying
to figure out his or her motivations. This was a popular practice in the 1800speople
had practices of reading peoples skulls or their facial expressions. So I would like you
to go through the paragraph again and circle all the places where you learn
something about Scrooges character: basically what kind of person he is. So please
take a moment to do that.
[1 minute later..]
So what are some things that you all have circle? [I circle these on the board.]
Possible student answers: covetous old sinner, hard and sharp, secret, selfcontained, solitary, cold, shrewd, frosty.
Okay so can anyone tell me how Scrooges character traits go along with the way
that he expresses himself to the world? What is one emotion/trait that we see
throughout this passage?
Student 2: Coldness!
Ok great. So what does it mean to be cold? What is the opposite of cold in this
passage? [ I read from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire if
necessary]
Student 3: Warm! Or generous.
Yea, I like to think that Scrooge is so frosty and perhaps stingy that it affects the way
that he carries himself. He has a cold within him that shows itself in his features
and in our perception of his hair ( a frosty rime).
What are some actions that Scrooge undertakes?
Student 1: He keeps his office really cold.
Yes, so perhaps he does not like to use heat to warm his office. So what if you worked
in an office and Scrooge was your boss? How do you think he would act toward his
workers?
Students: Maybe he would keep the office really cold.
Yes, and how about how much he would pay you for your work?
Student 4: He would not pay us very much.
Great. So we know that he is not generous and all of this frostiness has shown itself in

A couple of students
had questions about
what the worksheet was
asking when it inquired
what the character
would do in the future.

Name _______________________
the way that the author describes him.
Okay lets just practice with one more:
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the
rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from
her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an
album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she
stood, separate, staring the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. (p.
193)
So can someone describe to me what Margot looks like? What is her physical
appearance?
Student 1: She has no color to her face. And she is separate from everyone else.
Student 2: She is very frail and she sounds as if she is a ghost.

Some of these drawings

were very artistic. I
ended up drawing my
own illustration on the
board.

And what kind of inferences might we make about her internal self?
Student 1:
Maybe she feels she doesnt have much life in her or she feels drained from all the
rain.
Okay, thats a good inference.

III. Instructional steps

So now, lets take a look at two more texts for today. Please read the directions for
this assignment, Student 3. [Student 3 reads the directions]. Okay, so like the
directions say, I would like you guys to choose a passage to illustrate in comic book
form. Lets look at the first passage together. Student 4, please read the first
paragraph. [Student 4 reads the passage]. Great, so lets look at this passage
together. What is going on in this passage?
Student 5: Jose is trying to impress a girl.
Okay, so has he actually done anything about it or is he just thinking about it?
Student 6: He is mostly just thinking about it.
Yea, so what I would like you all to do is place a star every time you see a word that
relates to Jose thinking or imagining something to be happening rather than
actually happening.
Okay, then we are going to all together turn this into a comic book, so I would like
you to underline any time markers that you see in the text. So for making a comic for
this text-- How should we split up the events of this text? I think we should do a box
for each paragraph. [I model doing the first two paragraphs with the students on the
board and then let them do the rest of the paragraphs on their own for 5-7 minutes.]
Comprehension questions: So what do we know about Joses inner thoughts versus
what he is actually doing in the story?
[I then go onto the next text and have them mark it up accordingly. We then work on
creating a comic with that particular text.]

We did not get to make

the comic but we did
get to read aloud the
excerpt from the first
passage. I felt like the
students were really
engaged with it because
it was so related to their
lives.

Name _______________________

Comprehension Questions: What is the narrators attitude toward John Reed? How
would you describe the way that she views him?
III.

Closing

So today, we focused on some important strategies for reading. We learned about

visualizing the characters that we see and finding clues in their expressions and
physical appearances that may give us a sense of who they are on the inside. We also
learned about marking up the text for seeing a persons inner thoughts versus their
actual actions. And we thought about how character dialogue shows how characters
feel about each other.

Materials:
Smart Board
Illustrators packet

Differentiation: Detail specific actions/materials you will use to differentiate

instruction in this lesson for at least one of your three case study students.
I will be pointing out vocabulary and checking for comprehension during the
modeling process.

Technology Use: Detail specific technology being used in the lesson with
explanation for why it is being used.
I may use a Smart Board so students can easily see how I annotate a text.

I was glad that I was

able to go back to
objectives at the end of
the lesson.

Name _______________________

Appendices

Name _______________________

Illustrating Character
Assignment: You have been hired as the illustrator for the latest version of a famous
short story. Your job is to illustrate the following characters with as much accuracy as
possible to the text itself. In order to prove your faithfulness to the story, please
underline the specific words that support your illustration. After drawing, provide a
sentence or two that summarizes the character and his or her traits in this description.

Character 1:
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching,
grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no
steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek,
stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days;
and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Flint: a mineral
Covetous: desiring something that someone else has
Rime: frost

Name _______________________

Character Summary (i.e. Character X is a ______________ and ______________person who

would most likely do________________ and ___________________in the future.):

Character 2:
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for
years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the
yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and
if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring the rain and the
loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

Character Summary:

Name _______________________

Assignment 2: Congratulations! Your illustrations have been published with much

success in the latest versions of A Christmas Carol and All Summer in a Day. Now that
you have shown your skill in illustrating a character in a specific point in time, now it is
time for you to show your knowledge of character development. Your assignment is to
choose one of the texts below and create a page of a comic or graphic novel to show the
sequence of events. First decide how you are going to split the events into separate
boxes then illustrate each event. Dont forget about thought and speech bubbles!
Sample Passage 1:
For three weeks Jose tried to get the attention of Estela, the new girl at his middle
school. Shes cute, he said to himself when he first saw her in the cafeteria, unloading her
lunch of two sandwiches, potato chips, a piece of cake wrapped in waxed paper, and boxed
juice from a brown paper bag. Man, can she grub!
On the way home from school he walked through the alleys of his town, Fresno, kicking
cans. He was lost in a dream, trying to figure out a way to make Estela notice him. He thought
of tripping in front of her while she was leaving her math, class, but he had already tried that
with a girl in sixth grade. All he did was rip his pants and bruise his knee, which kept him from
playing in the championship soccer game. And that girl had just stepped over him as he lay on
the ground, the shame of rejection reddening his face.
He thought of going up to Estela and saying, in his best James Bond voice, Camacho.
Jose Camcho, at your service. He imagined she would say, Right-o, and together they would
go off and talk in code.
He even tried doing his homework. Estela was in his history class, and so he knew she
was as bright as a cops flashlight shining in your face. While they were studying Egypt, Jose
amazed the teacher, Mrs. Flores, when he scored twenty out of twenty on a quizand then
eighteen out of twenty on a quizand then eighteen out of twenty when she retested him the
same day because she thought that he had cheated.

Specific Directions:
1. Place *stars* around words that show that Jose is thinking about or imagining
something.
2. Please underline all time markers.

Name _______________________

3. In your comic, focus on the difference between what Jose experiences versus what he
is simply imagining. You may use thought bubbles to do this.

Sample Passage 2:
What were you doing behind the curtain? John Reed asked.
I was reading.
Show the book.
I returned to the window and fetched it thence.
You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says;
you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live
here with gentlemens children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and
wear clothes at our mamas expense. Now, Ill teach you to rummage my
bookshelves: for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few
years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the
windows.
I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and
poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a
cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I
fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain
was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.
Wicked and cruel boy! I said. You are like a murdereryou are like a slavedriveryou are like the Roman emperors!
I had read Goldsmiths History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero,
Caligula, etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus
to have declared aloud.
What! what! he cried. Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and
Georgiana? Wont I tell mama?

Specific Assignment:
Please underline all the words that describe John Reed.
Please put [brackets] around words that describe who the narrator is.
When illustrating, keep in mind dialogue and the actions that take place.

Name _______________________

You may use speech bubbles.

Use inference from the passage and your imagination to illustrate what John Reed and
Jane (the narrator) look like in relation to each other.

Name _______________________

Name _______________________