Creating Character Profiles

After reading about this type of activity a few years ago I finally got to introduce it to a class.

Yesterday an English class of year 7 boys worked on this task that required them to consider the characters in their novels. This approach worked very well as an English class activity.  It  focussed our Year 7 boys on the characters in their novels. The boys had been working in literature circle groups for almost a term. Each student had to create a profile for one of the characters in the books they have been reading. Some of the data in the profile was told to them by the author and other aspects they had to infer from events in the story.

This character profile will help them later when the have to create an interview podcast as the final task on the book
This year I also had them create a facebook-like page for their character as well.
I used a template that I saved from Dale Basler’s site. It was created in Publisher.
I then adapted it and created an example using Sherlock Holmes as my character.

On the “facebook page” the boys had to:

• Include basic profile data – age, education, family info, make up networks the character may belong to, education, etc. including an image of or avatar representing the character.
• Add “friends” – other characters from the book and put in how they “fit” into the story.
• Add posts from these friends.
• Put at least 2 stories in “What’s on my mind” about incidents in the book.
• Create or find 3 images representing events, people or places in the story.

This activity worked very well with the boys. They enjoyed doing the task, both those who had facebook accounts and those who did not. Without realising it, the boys did a lot of thinking and inferring and displayed their understanding of the books without realising how much work they had actually done.

Using Picture Books in Lit circles

One of my colleagues and I decided to use picture books as the genre for our first literature circle book for a year 7 English class.
We used picture books to encourage the students to look beyond what was written in their text. They were encouraged to think critically about all the graphic components and reflect on how they add to the text. The tasks were also developed to encourage the boys to develop their inference skills and respond to the works they were reading on a level that they had not been required to do with their earlier texts.

The boys were asked to choose one of 6 picture books.  Their choice was the basis for the formation of the group they would work with for three weeks. 
The boys read the picture books and were given a number of short tasks to complete; some on an individual basis but then sharing their thoughts/ideas with the rest of their group. All these short tasks were then used to create the basis of a glog for each group.

Today they put their ideas together and prepared to create their glog. The will include text, images and multimedia components. They have also been given a rubric to indicate how their glogs will be assessed. I have put the rubric and details into my Reading wiki.

The work that the groups have done so far has on the whole been excellent and I am hoping to have some great glogs that I can use in the library. I also used part of a lesson to explain the basics of Creative Commons to the class as they began a search for appropriate images and explained that sound and music is available under CC licenses too. The students took this information on baord and I was pleased to see that they were busy finding CC images for their glogs.

I have included a list of the short tasks that were undertaken by the students below.

• Analysis of the cover: Comment on the picture on the cover – what it tells the reader about the book; the colours used; the style and colour of the lettering used; what questions the cover raises in the mind of the reader; what other information is given on the cover
•  ‍Scanning skills: Spend 5 minutes browsing through the book and then spend 5 minutes writing what you think the book will be about based on what you see and read.
•  ‍The introduction: In 50 words outline how the author introduces the book and catches the attention of the reader.
•  ‍Sharing ideas with the group: Come to an agreement about what works best on the cover. (and anything you don’t think works). As a group create an alternative cover and “Blurb” for your book
•  ‍Summarising Skills: Make a 100 word summary of the pages which you read for today in your own words. Remember that a summary needs to include the main ideas/information of the text in a logical order. Share your ideas with your group. Do they agree or do they have alternative points?
•  ‍Creating Questions: Write 5 questions which could be used to test the reader’s comprehension of the text which you read for today. Remember that questions need to include the main information in the text and they need to test whether the reader has understood the text. All questions need to be open-ended to allow for discussion. Share these questions with your group and take note of their answers.
•  ‍Illustrating skills: Draw a picture which illustrates the section of the book which you read for today. The drawing must show what is in the text and how well you have understood the meaning of the text.
•  ‍Character description: Pick a character from your book and write either a “missing person” or “wanted” poster for this person. Include in your poster information that you have discovered from the book.

Book Trailers – The process we took with our students

On Friday, at a statewide SLAV conference, our students presented the book trailers they had worked on this term. It was a great day and the students excelled themselves. We talked about the process and they then showed the videos, discussing the choices they had made along the way.

I have put down my introduction to the session, with the process I used to put the project together.

Using podcasting in literature circle classes

Uploaded to Flickr by Dave Gray http://flickr.com/photos/david_gray/521517136/

Another day, another rubric. This time I have created one for the podcasts of class group interviews.

As a response to the reading done by groups in a year 8 literature circles class, we have been trying to engage students in reading reflections by creating podcasts of interviews with the book characters. Each group conducts an interview, with one person taking on the role of the interviewer and the others become characters from the novel. Each of the boys have to complete a character profile and then the group works on a script for a 3-5min interview. Once they are satisfied with the script the use iRivers to do the recording, often conducting 2-3 “run throughs” before putting it all together using the Audacity (audio-only podcasts) software. Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. They can put in special sound effects and create extra atmosphere by adding music before they send us the final product. The boys always love this project and enjoy using the technology. They become quite critical of their scripts, the timing and the effects, often re-writing and re-recording to get things just right. For most of the students very little teacher help is needed although they do like to discuss production ideas, etc. It is a great way for groups to respond to their reading.

We have assessed a number of things from the different stages of the podcast:

1. planning/preparation (character profiles, scripts)
2. production (recording the interviews)
3. editing (and other technical processes) of the interviews
4. publishing (Sharing the interview) 
5. the group work. 

The rubric can be found on my ”Reading – active and engaging“ wiki.

Students responding to books

Uploaded Flickr on 04102007 by lynxhoney http://flickr.com/photos/queenmum/453365084/

At this time of year teachers can start to become a bit more tired a bit more jaded. They are coming into the final part of the school year and are getting ready to write reports. I have been lucky as student work in the past two weeks has really energised me.

I have been working with another teacher to make podcasts of some radio interviews that the year 8 students have prepared. In their groups, and after they had read their literature circle books, the boys each created character profile for a character from their books and one for an interviewer. Each group then wrote an interview script. The interviews were recorded and then everything put together using audacity. The boys were taught how to get the most out of this piece of software, adding music and other sound effect as well as how to alter their own voices. They have been having a lot of fun, the scripts are great and the interviews are starting to really take shape.

The second lot of great work comes from boys who have been working on book trailers. A couple of boys put together some really well thought out stills, sound and teaxt to create some 30-40 second trailers. One of the boys likes to call his a “book teaser”. Today I was given a DVD for a trailer to Nemesis: Into the shadows. The two boys who worked on this used a digital video camera to enact some sections of the book, put together a great musical background and added some poignant text and dialogue. They used Audacity for the sound and Ulead VideoStudio for the rest. This was much more complex than the earlier trailers and was just over a minute long. It held the year 8 class we showed it to spellbound and Daniel recieved a round of spontaneous applause when it ended.

In both these types of presentations the student showed that they had undersood the books they were reading. They had all analysed what they had read and then showed that they had evaluated them so that they could construct new situations, extrapolate on what might happen at another time and find sound and or music to enhance the story and its themes.

The literature circle class students proved that they had understood settings in their books and he characters in the books enough to feel that they could “become” the characters for the purpose of the interviews. The book trailers had to give enough of a glimpse of the novels so as to make others want to read them. It was all very exciting and I had done none of it, but just helped out when asked.

I can’t wait to show/play them in the library.