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How to Help Kids Infer Character Emotions!

I've been inspired this week to share some of the good lessons that DO happen in my classroom! I absolutely love Reader's Workshop in my classroom and my kids love it as much as I do. Our topic this week is being able to infer and interpret character feelings and emotions. Check out our WALT and WILF learning intentions below.

WALT

I understand that I can use clues from the text to identify how a character is feeling

WILF

I can describe how a character is feeling, using clues from the text

Over the holidays (as I sat on my fabulous couch!), I created some resources to use this week. The anchor chart I used and task cards that formed the minilesson (see picture below), can be found on my TpT store. The link is at the end of this post. I'd like to give credit to Michael Friermood at 'The Thinker Builder' for his thought bubbles! You can find a link to the resource I used from his website at the end of the post as well.

Character Emotion Anchor Chart & Task Cards

I started off by asking the kids what an 'emotion' was, before showing them the anchor chart. One of the kids said that it was "how you are feeling". To build upon that, I asked him why I might be asking that question? Another student said that we might be talking about our feelings. I agreed, but then asked what any of that has to do with reading? They clued in pretty quickly to the fact that we were going to be finding out how our characters were feeling, using that amazing skill called 'inferring'. We have done a lot of work previously on making inferences, so they know what it's all about!

We looked at the anchor chart together and I had them read out the emotions. There were more emotions that we added to the anchor chart, so we just wrote in the blank spaces! From there, I showed them one of the task cards and had a student read it aloud. (They always love reading aloud! It helps them to practise their fluency and expression!)

The kids were able to straight away tell me how the character would have been feeling, but I really wanted them to focus on identifying the clues from the text, so I asked them, 'How do you know that?' This is where the thought bubbles from 'The Thinker Builder' came into play. I had laminated a large copy of the thought bubble and gave it to one student. He came up the front and held it to his head. The kids then had to explain how they knew how he was feeling using key words that they found in the task card.

One child really surprised me with his thinking! He mentioned that in Task Card #1, the author used a lot of exclamation marks, which suggested to him that the character was excited! I absolutely loved that response!!

We were able to write their thoughts onto the bubble in whiteboard marker.

The original activity suggested imagining what the characters were thinking in their heads, but we have adapted that to be what they are feeling and how we know it. We will build on it from there.

As an independent activity during our Reader's Workshop, the group completing it today had to choose a character and describe how they were feeling on mini thought bubbles. Here are some of their responses:

The kids did a fantastic job with it and loved the mini thought bubbles! I always make sure that they are able to justify their thinking, using clues from the text. It's one thing to be able to tell you how the character is feeling, but it's a whole other ball game being able to provide the clues to support their thinking!

I'd love to hear other suggestions for how you have taught students to infer character emotions. If you've given this a go in your classroom, let me know how it turns out!

Until next time, keep smiling!

Check out the resources at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Inferring-Character-Emotions-3093091

Follow me on Instagram: @mrswhittysworld

Credits:

'The Thinker Builder'

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