Based on a book that students just read, students will practice analyzing characters by imagining themselves as a character within the story. By thinking about and describing their own character traits, students will come up with creative ideas of how their personal character would impact the story. Students will develop deeper understandings of the book, the characters, and how certain scenes play out by analyzing how their own character would interact with the scenes and other characters.

This assignment can also help students begin develop ideas of how to create characters for creative writing. This can also be an assignment used in replace of a book report.

The tasks involved include:
- Describing who their character would be friends with
- What lesson their character would teach readers
- What character traits their character has
- How the story would be impacted or changed because of their character
- Sketching and describing a mini comic strip of an actual scene with their character included

This handout may be copied and redistributed to students in the buyer's classroom only; it may not be shared without purchase.


Analyzing/Creating Characters Using Reading and Creative Thinking by Michelle Puszka is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.