Story Characters - Using "Fakebook" to create a character analysis (Smartboard)

Purpose: Character analysis is an area that students seem to have great difficulty. Readers seem to really have problem grasping and connecting with characters in the text. This engaging activity allows students to combine the authentic experience of reading social media text with the fun of creating a new “Fakebook” page that is a visual and written representation of a character’s life. In creating a “Fakebook” page, students practice character analysis, understanding literary devices, and determining author’s purpose. Not only are these create “Fakebook” pages a comprehensive way to analyze individual characters, but the process is so enjoyable that students hardly realize that learning is taking place!

Fakebook is a website that can only be used for educational purposes, and allows students to create fake Facebook pages. These pages can be saved, and students can even create secondary characters that can write messages on the characters wall.

GOALS: Students will analyze a character to help them connect to that character. Within this analysis students will need to get explicit and implied evidence from the text to support these characteristics of that character:

Some of the character qualities that the students could include on the “Fakebook” pages include:

1. Get a picture of the character, and put the picture on the page. You will need to find evidence within your novel that supports the detail you put into your character. In other words, if you give your character brown hair, where in the novel did the author describe him or her as having brown hair? Can you support it with evidence?

2. DESCRIBE the most important relationship that he or
she has in the novel.

3. What is the most important goal for your character?

4. What drives his/her thoughts and actions? This can be done through status updates when the character goes through some important event, or based on their feelings and attitudes towards other characters.

5. Driving Thoughts/Actions – Consider thoughts that your character may refer to often throughout the novel. Or, think of actions that are often repeated.

6. What color(s) do you most connect with your character? Why?
Work these colors into the Facebook page.

7. What objects can you connect with your character that illustrates his/her spirit (how he or she really is!)? You can use objects mentioned within the novel or objects you think correspond with
the character. Please place at least 4 objects on your Fakebook page.

8. How has your character changed within the novel? Trace these changes in words and/or artwork. Please place this information at the on your Fakebook page.

9. Create Fakebook friends that your character comes in contact with. You can post what kind of interaction the character has with those friends from the book. You can even have the antagonist be a friend and leave comments on the page that were found in the book that clue the reader into the conflict between the two characters.

10. Include videos that represent qualities of your character, or help others see qualities of your character’s traits.

Common Core Standards:

RL.6.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
RL.6.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story’s or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.
W.6.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
SL.6.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 6 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
SL.6.2 Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study.
SL.6.5 Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, images, music, sound) and visual displays in presentations to clarify information.