Character Creation

Overview

In lesson 5 of Exciting English Explorations, students build on earlier work identifying story settings and story structure. They will design an original character, choose precise descriptive and feeling words, write a short character profile, and share it orally with an audience.

Learning intentions

Students will:

• create a character suitable for a narrative.
• use descriptive language to show appearance, personality and feelings.
• choose taught vocabulary to make ideas more interesting and precise.
• speak clearly and listen respectfully when sharing ideas.

Success criteria

• I can create a character with a name, appearance, personality and feeling.
• I can use at least three descriptive words, including one feeling word.
• I can write complete sentences with capital letters and full stops.
• I can share my character using a clear voice and answer a question about it.

Curriculum links

• Understanding and responding to literature by creating a text with a similar narrative structure and intentional language choices.
• Understanding and using taught vocabulary to extend and elaborate ideas.
• Communicating effectively in social and learning interactions, including oral narrative.
• Planning, creating and revising a short written text using vocabulary, sentence structure and punctuation.

Lesson structure (60 minutes)

1. 0–7 min · Hook and recall. Teacher opens the character mystery hook showing a striking close-up illustration of an unknown character and asks, “What can we work out about this character?” Students make one observation and one inference, then recall what makes a story character interesting.

2. 7–17 min · Explicit teaching. Teacher uses the character features slides to model a character profile for “Milo the Moon Gardener”, thinking aloud about appearance, personality, feelings and actions. Students help improve simple sentences such as “Milo was nice” by suggesting precise words such as thoughtful, curious, worried or brave.

3. 17–25 min · Vocabulary exploration. Teacher displays the feelings vocabulary sentence strips and reads several feeling words and sentence models aloud, briefly discussing how a character’s feeling might affect an action. Students select a feeling word and orally complete: “My character feels ___ because ___.”

4. 25–40 min · Guided creation. Teacher distributes the character creation worksheet and models completing the first section, reminding students that their character should be suitable for a story. Students draw or describe their character, choose a name, and write sentences about appearance, personality, feelings and a possible action or problem. The teacher conferences with the student, prompting with “What does your character want?” and “How can the reader know?”

5. 40–48 min · Revise and rehearse. Teacher returns to the revise and rehearse prompt and models checking for a capital letter, full stops, interesting vocabulary and clear meaning. Student reads the profile aloud, circles one word to improve, makes a revision, and rehearses sharing with expression.

6. 48–56 min · Share and respond. Teacher invites the student to present the character to the teacher as the audience, or to a partner/another available class member if present. Student shares the profile and answers one question, while the listener gives one specific response, such as “I can imagine your character because…”

7. 56–60 min · Plenary and exit reflection. Teacher displays the closing reflection slide and asks, “Which word helped your reader understand your character best?” Student states the word, explains its effect, and completes the final reflection box on the worksheet.

Resources

• the character mystery hook
• the character creation worksheet
• the feelings vocabulary sentence strips
• Pencils, coloured pencils and eraser
• Whiteboard and marker
• Teacher-created model character profile
• Student’s English workbook, if needed for additional writing space

Assessment

• Listen during the hook and vocabulary discussion for observations, inferences and accurate use of feeling vocabulary.
• During conferencing, check that the character has narrative potential and that the student is selecting descriptive words intentionally rather than listing unrelated details.
• Review the worksheet and oral sharing for complete sentences, basic punctuation, vocabulary choices and the ability to explain a character’s feeling or motivation.

Differentiation

• Support by scribing the student’s oral ideas, offering sentence starters such as “My character is…”, “They feel… because…” and “One day…”, and allowing drawing before writing.
• Use the feelings sentence strips as a visual word bank; rehearse each sentence orally before recording it. Accept speech, pointing, drawing or assistive communication as appropriate.
• Provide extension through a second feeling or a contrasting trait, such as “brave but worried”, and ask the student to explain how the trait affects the character’s action.
• For EAL/D learners, explicitly demonstrate each word with an image, gesture or example and accept home-language discussion before sharing the English sentence.