Here is a warmup, post-reading writing activity which you can do with your students if you are dealing with a reading/novella for which there are a number of characters and descriptions. I got this idea from Kelly Gallagher's book Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It - although the book was published in 2009, there are still a lot of issues which are still pertinent over a decade later.
Essentially, you create a chart in the target language with characters and verbs (I stick with high frequency words), and you ask students to fill out the chart with information which they know to be true about that character.
Example (in English):
Observations
- Since this is a warmup, I like that it does not require students to write in complete sentences in the target language (unless they want to), so it allows them to respond in words/phrases to finish the sentence.
- I also like that this warm up does involve higher order thinking, because students are having to distinguish characteristics and actions which are specific to certain characters or to show commonalities between characters.
- It is a great quick way to focus on character development and motivation of characters.
- This is also a great graphic organizer for students!
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