Character Traits

You will be able to: 1.Define character. 2.Describe what characters can do. 3.Define Character trait 4.Infer character traits from text you read.

What is a character?  A character is a person or animal in a story.

What can characters do?  Feel things  Say things  Think things  Go places

Characters……  Characters can walk.  Characters can talk.  Characters can jump.  Characters can sit and rock in a rocking chair.  Characters can lie in bed.  Characters can dream.

Remember  Characters act!!!!

Character Actions  Character actions show us what kind of people the characters are: curious, sad, greedy, love struck, or confused.

What is a character trait?

Character Traits  Descriptive adjectives that tell us the specific qualities of the character

Character Traits  Same kinds of words that we might use to describe ourselves or others  But we are using them to describe characters in something we have read.

How do you find character traits?  The author may tell us these traits directly. “Maniac was blind…….he couldn’t see that Mars Bar disliked him, maybe even hated him.” Maniac Magee p. 57

How do you find character traits?  Often an author will show us these traits in action.  Our job as readers is to draw a conclusion (to infer them) about the character’s traits from what the character says, thinks, or does.

How do you find character traits?  We might infer a character trait from something a character does only once.  We might draw a conclusion from a series of things a character says and does.

Name the character traits: There wasn’t an eleven year old in the East End who could stand up to Mars Bar’s glare. In the West End even high-schoolers were know to crumble under the glare. To old ladies on both sides of Hector Street, it was all but fatal. And when Mars Bar stepped off a curb and combined the glare with his super-slow-dip-stride slumpshuffle, well, it was said he could back up traffic all the way to Bridgeport while he took ten minutes to cross the street. Maniac Magee p. 36

What are Mars Bar’s character traits?

Name the character traits:  He played with the little ones and read them stories and taught them things. He took Bow Wow out for runs and he did the dishes without anybody asking. He carried out the trash, mowed the grass, cleaned up his own spills, turned out lights, put the cap back on the toothpaste tube, flushed the toilet, and ……kept his room neat. Maniac Magee p

What are Maniac Magee’s character traits?

Name the character traits: “ You got it all wrong buster….You do not have a choice. I am not asking you. I’m telling you. You are coming home with me, and you are going to sleep in my room, which is going to be your room—and i don’t care if you sleep on the floor or the windowsill or what—but you are going to sleep there and not here. And you are going to sleep there tonight and tomorrow night and the night after that and the night after that and every night, expect maybe once in a while if you decide to sleep at Snicker’s house, if he ever asks you again. This is not your home! Now move!” Maniac Magee p. 183

What are Amanda Beale’s character traits?

Examples of character traits? BossyDeterminedOrganizedDependable SelfishStubbornFriendlyCourageous GenerousTrustingPatientKind HelpfulQuick-TemperedPolitetimid