Analysis of Student Work:
The students were able to learn and apply the character song successfully within the first lesson. General information about what a character is and how the reader learns about a character was recalled accurately at the end of the lesson, indicating the acquired understanding of character as a literary element. Various students volunteered answers to related questions, each remembering information with ease. Lesson one of the mini unit concentrated on modeling, with the incorporation of think-alouds, to present an introduction to character and build students’ foundational knowledge about character. Overall, the students were receptive to the content of the lesson, engaging in a whole-group discussion, answering prompting questions and offering relevant information from the story, and evaluating the important information about character.
The students’ comprehension about character demonstrated an ability to move forward with the unit as planned and to have students practice independently creating a circle map about a new character.
Student A:
Student A was able to identify, after the character song was learned, that a character includes “eyes, face and head.” During the post-reading whole-group discussion, Student A demonstrated comprehension of a character by referring to a classmate as a potential character
“because he has eyes, face and head.” When a peer offered that Chrysanthemum was “angry,” but had difficulty providing information about when she seemed to be angry, Student A volunteered that she was angry when her “friends were being mean to her.” His participation indicated that he met the objectives of the day. Student A was able to recall the basic idea of a character and to apply the learned song. In addition, he was able to describe an event in the story that was important to the identification of Chrysanthemum as “angry.” Student A was asked to think about what her friends were doing to be “mean,” a prompt to suggest the inclusion of more specific detail from the story.
Student B:
Student B actively participated in learning the character song and was one of the first to volunteer recalling how a possible character can be determined by stating that a character has
“eyes, face and head.” She started to lose focus during the story, not behaving in a distracting manner but evidently disengaged from the story. Student B was quickly redirected to the story when she was asked to think about why Chrysanthemum would choose the “long way to get to school.” Due to her initial lack of concentration, she thought for a minute before responding and,

after rewording the question, Student B responded that “maybe she wanted to take her time.”
Student B was asked to think about why she would want to take her time and reminded that at the beginning of the story Chrysanthemum could not wait to get to school. She was asked what happened to change Chrysanthemum’s feelings about school. Student B was then able to cite that
Chrysanthemum’s friends were not nice to her and that made her not want to go to school anymore. Able to reach a reasonable response with prompting, Student B provided the class with relevant information and was, simultaneously, redirected to the lesson. After this discussion,
Student B was visibly more engaged in the story.
Lesson Reflection :
In lesson one, students were expected to build knowledge about character as a literary element and to be able to use describing words and events from the story to talk about a main character. Students were told during the onset of the lesson that, though informal discussions about characters had happened, the class was going to begin a unit about characters, how a main character can be identified, how a reader can learn about a main character and how to tell about a character. In the first lesson, students were told that the focus would be on describing the main character and talking about events in a story that helped to tell about the character.
In modeling the creation of a character circle map with the students’ ideas, there was some initial difficulty with students’ understanding the type of information being sought. There are several possible explanations for the misconceptions and difficulties. The class had worked on a chart of describing words prior to the unit with “feelings,” “personality,” and “size/shape” describing words. Perhaps reviewing this chart with the students prior to the circle map, a more in-depth review rather than just mentioning its relevance, would have provided a review of what describing words are and the different types of describing words. The review may have better prepared the students for the task at hand and tapped prior knowledge to provide a stepping-stone to the new lesson.
In addition, the circle map was drawn and reminders were given to the students regarding the relevance of describing words and events to the main character, Chrysanthemum. The students likely would have benefited from a direct think-aloud, modeling the selection of a describing word and/or event from the story that helped the reader know more about the main character. The later inclusion of modeling a describing word and why the term was selected seemed to increase students’ success with the objective. Students demonstrated a much stronger level of comprehension once they had been given a concrete example to model the expectation.

The initial incorporation of a think-aloud to model would have helped the students’ comprehension from the onset of the activity. An additional problem resulted from the inadvertent use of the term “feeling” during post-reading questioning. Without realizing it, the questioning included repeated references to how the character “felt” in the story, deterring students from recognizing the describing words relative to physical attributes and personality.
This was not realized until the conclusion of the lesson, but, in retrospect analysis, it affected the lesson and therefore the clarification of different types of describing words was emphasized in the subsequent lesson.
At the conclusion of the lesson, the students were successfully able to recall the important information about a main character, how the reader learns about the main character, and the intent of a describing word to help tell more about the character. This indicated students’ overall success with the objectives of the lesson despite initial confusion. The modeling helped the students by providing a direct and clear example of how a circle map can be effective in telling about a main character. It was an intentional mirror of lesson two’s task, setting up the students with a reference for the second day’s independent circle map creation with an unfamiliar character. Students’ participation in the whole-group discussion provided learning through discourse while the circle map provided a visual learning tool. It became apparent, through this lesson, that think-alouds, modeling and discourse are strong tools in teaching. The three proved successful in this lesson, as the students were able to recall pertinent information and select appropriate describing words and events, after clarification, to meet the objectives of the lesson.