3 No-Prep Activities For Teaching Main Character & Traits
Teaching main character and character traits is one of my favorite reading units. Learning about characters in books is so interesting and intriguing to me and I fall in love with so many characters in the books I read. So, of course, I love to teach this reading unit. I’m going to share with you some free, no-prep activities to supplement your main character reading unit.
Activities For Teaching Main Character & Traits: 3 No Prep Activities
#1: Post-It Party
One activity students love for character traits is Post-it Party! This is a great way to informally assess if your students know what character traits are. Give your students one post-it. On the post-it, they need to write one outside trait to describe you. For example, brown hair, freckles, etc. Then, they’ll put that post-it on your hair, your freckles, etc. You can also do this with inside traits by standing in front of your whiteboard and they put the post-its surrounding you (or just on the board in general).
You could do this with every student in partners or in a whole group setting. The possibilities are endless!
#2: Which Wall?
This activity is to help students understand the differences between inside traits and outside traits. Write “Inside Trait” on a piece of paper and “Outside Traits” on another piece of paper. Tape the pieces of paper on opposite walls. Then, have students stand in the middle. Say a character trait and then students go to the wall that matches. For example, if you said “kind”, they would go to the “Inside Trait” wall.
Need some help getting started? Here is a quick list of some character traits:
- Nervous
- Mean
- Friendly
- Patient
- Stubborn
- Black hair
- Freckles
- Tall
- Brown eyes
- Glasses
- Pink fuzzy hair
- Tail
Activities For Teaching Main Character & Traits #3: Build A Character
This activity requires students to have a piece of blank paper, pencil, and crayons. On this piece of paper, they are going to draw a character. Make sure they know that it doesn’t have to be human! Remember- lots of animals are characters in stories too! Once they draw and color their character, they need to give their character a name and write it at the top of the paper. Then, write inside and outside character traits surrounding the character.
This activity is super low prep, but really fun for our students! Have them share with the class or partners when they are finished. Keep these and create stories with them!
Check out our character resources!
Use these free posters and bookmarks for teaching character traits!
You can use any of these activities with our main character reading unit! You can plan your entire reading unit and lesson plans with this comprehensive, thorough unit.
What’s included in the Main Character and Character Traits Reading Unit:
- 3 Lesson Plans
- Main Character Anchor Chart
- 2 Character Traits Anchor Charts
- Character Vs. Not A Character Sort Character Traits Sort
- Character Cards
- Reading Passages with a short story and students identify the character traits
- Mouse Character Craft
- Graphic Organizers
- Small Group Chit Chat Cards
- Centers
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