Lights, Camera, Action: Interviewing a Book Character

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

While reading, students closely examine the different characters in a novel by keeping journal entries, meeting for group discussions, and using an online graphic organizer. This extensive character examination helps them prepare for a final project that involves creating an interview-style television show in which students write the script and assume the roles of the television host and the characters on the show. Questions can be about events from the novel as well as other topics that were not explicitly covered in the novel. Answers are based on students’ knowledge of the characters and their personalities.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Interactive Story Map: Students get a better look at the characters they’re dealing with when they plot out descriptive details in the Character Map.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Van Horn, L. (1997). The characters within us: Readers connect with characters to create meaning and understanding. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 40, 342–347.

• Students who read with introspection and respond with purpose come to view themselves as readers and writers who have a duty to think and create.
  
  
• Pretending to be a character motivates more purposeful reading and writing.

 

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