CHARLOTTE'S WEB ACTIVITIES | Jodi Durgin Education Co.

{Click to Access and Download: Charlotte’s Web Character Trait Activity Pages}

Understanding a character’s words and actions will help to support a student’s overall comprehension of a text. Being able to visualize and summarize character traits are prerequisites to higher levels of comprehension, such as synthesizing information, making inferences, and forming opinions. This packet will help to strengthen those skills as well as strengthen the students’ ability to reference a text to support their thinking.

In my classroom I made a booklet for each student by copying the cover, character trait list and individual character pages back to back and stapling them together on the left-hand side. I projected the character page from this PDF onto my smartboard and we discussed how to use the list, I love knowing that my students’ vocabulary is expanding as we complete these activities. We also discuseed synonms, how good writer’s really think about their word choices, and how these words would be great options to include in their own writing.

During read aloud I modeled how to identify character traits based on what a character says or does and periodically recorded a trait, the page number and the evidence from the text onto our class chart. This served as a reminder on how to complete the organizer.

I often paused during reading and had the students discuss what a character was doing or saying and how that could be summarized by a trait. This provided students with additional ideas and support in completing their own booklets.

I use the template that includes page number when citing evidence because I have a class set of books and each student has a copy of their own to reread and reference. I have also included an optional version that does not require the students to record a page number. This version is perfect if you are completing the reading as a read aloud.

{Click to Access and Download: Charlotte’s Web Character Trait Activity Pages}

This packet includes 2 versions of an 8 page character trait activity booklet focused on the characters in E.B. White’s popular novel Chartlotte’s Web. It also includes a bonus 3 page writing activity that has students identify their own character traits.

If you are reading Charlotte’s Web…and I really hope you are because it is such a beautiful book…you may also be interested in the Diary of a Pig book I made as well as the Spider Non-Fiction Packet.

Once upon a time on my previous blog I wrote the post below. I’ve received many emails requesting I make the file available in my store. While it was my intent to do so long ago, I FINALLY got around to doing so. I love, love, love this project. Last year my kids wrote, “Diary of a Crayfish” in science. This set includes covers, about the author pages, and writing/illustrating pages for your students to use as a reader response activity with Charlotte’s Web. I’m happy to do custom listings if you have a specific “diary” in mind. Just shoot me an email: littlestlearners @ gmail dot com.

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Have you read the Diary of a _____ books by Doreen Cronin? So much fun.

There are diaries for a worm, a fly and a spider. Each is more awesome than the last. T

hey are written in the form of a diary, are witty and have fun illustrations and quick one-liners.

I love them. Kids always love them.

One of them mentions that a worms head looks just like it’s butt. What kid isn’t going to love that?

A few years back, I happened to be reading Charlotte’s Web to the class as my chapter book read aloud and broke these fun titles out during our writing block as a model of organization and voice from six traits.

Ever have one of those light bulb moments? You know, the kind where you scrap your plans and go with something way better that “just came to you?”

That’s when “The Diary of a Pig” was born. We used Cronin’s books as a model/inspiration and composed our own version based on the events in Charlotte’s Web.

We discussed 1st person vs 3rd person.

We talked about style. We chatted about the important parts that would be important to include. Not only is it fun and creative, but it is a fabulous way to check a child’s level of comprehension on a text.

After reading a chapter (or chapters in some cases), I asked the class to compose a diary entry.

While the book doesn’t specify dates, we used context clues to form a timeline and thus “date” our entries (Wilbur being a spring pig, Fern being in school, the crickets signaling summer, etc).

They were asked to include some words that they considered to be “key vocabulary.”

The cover was designed to look like Cronin’s. We observed how each of her covers had a white background and each had a pencil as part of the illustration. They needed to do the same.

After all of the books were completed, we made them available in the class library for a bit. They took a lot of pride in this activity.

You could easily do this with other books as well.