How to Teach a Character Study Unit

One of our favorite week long units of study focuses on character analysis. It is a sure fire lesson to increase student engagement. They love learning more about themselves and others around them. Some of the topics we teach with our students involve character analysis vocabulary, direct vs. indirect characterization, and emotions vs. traits.

We start off our unit of study by discussing the nine different enneagrams. Students have a field day with this activity. We then start to delve deeper with the idea that everyone has a default mode of sadness, anger, or fear based on their birth story. With these two layers of distinction, students then start to apply these ideas to the people around them and to the characters on the pages of books.

Two stories that we love to read when leveling into character analysis are “October” by Neil Gaiman and “The Hitchhiker” by Roald Dahl. We love teaching “October” because it focuses on only two characters and is only two pages long. Plus, it has a plot twist which most middle school students love. “The Hitchhiker” is a bit longer at about 8-10 pages and focuses on three characters that offer tons of evidence for direct and indirect characterization. We then read a core novel that focuses on character development.

Our students love our character unit of study, and we hope that your students do, too!