Use a Character Wheel to Identify and Organize Character Traits
One major focus of the Language Arts and Literacy curriculum is characterization – who is a character and what makes him or her tick?
A character wheel is a specific type of graphic organizer designed to help students identify the traits of a character and put those traits into words.
How It Works
The premise is pretty simple. You start with a wheel shape – a small circle in the middle, a big circle on the outside, and lines (spokes) connecting the two. The student writes the character's name in the middle of the small circle and then writes character traits down on the spokes.
What goes into the character wheel can vary a bit. The simplest character wheel is left blank – the student fills it in as he or she goes, and picks out whatever character traits he or she can find.
You may want to narrow this down a bit, though, and provide your students with some more guidance. By identifying specific traits to look for, you provide scaffolding for week students and also direct them to work on the specific skills that you want to develop.
Sample Layouts – What traits should you include?
Here's a screenshot of a blank character wheel. Click the picture to see it full-size.
These are of formats that I've seen for character wheels. Using this blank sample wheel, you could create one of these formats as-is or create your own. The sample is available in OpenOffice (odt) format and MS Office (doc) format.
Senses - Students need to look for physical traits of the character using each of the five senses. The wheel would have five sections, labeled “Sight,” “Sound,” “Smell,” “Touch,” and “Taste.” This is a good way to help students see the variety of ways in which physical traits can be used.
Direct vs. Indirect - Students look for examples of direct characterization and indirect characterization. The wheel has six sections, three for direct and three for indirect. This focuses students on the method of characterization, instead of the content of the traits.
Types of Traits - In this wheel, students identify one each of a variety of types of traits. They need to identify a mental trait, a physical trait, another character's reaction, dialogue, and environment.
Remember – the wheel isn't set in stone. These archetypes won't cover all of the situations that you could use a character wheel for – you might need to be creative and adapt it to your own needs.
Nonetheless, it's a simple and effective visual organizer to help students with analyzing characters.
Add A Comment
samccoy left this on February 14, 2008, 9:32 am
Excellent;D Keep up the good work! I was shocked to learn that some teachers still haven't learned to use grahic organizers to improve their teaching and their student's learning potential.
I love graphic organizers, and I have used this wheel; Sometimes the outside circle is left off and more "spokes" are added. I have heard people called it a spider organizer...drawing in the characteritics of the topic;D
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