Teaching students about character traits goes beyond just identifying traits they see in books. Teaching students about character traits is also an important way to help them identify these traits in real life. Therefore, providing them with an additional tool for developing their own character traits.
Since this is such an important thing to teach to young kids, it is important to understand how to teach it. To help you get started teaching character traits in your elementary classroom, we have put together a list of ideas on how to teach character traits.
Character Traits Definition
Before we dive into how to teach students about character traits let’s do a quick review of what character traits are. Character traits reflect a person’s moral, ethical, and social values. They also influence how a person navigates challenges, makes decisions, and treats others.
Just based on the short definition above, you can guess that character traits encompass a wide range of qualities. Some of the basic traits include honesty, integrity, kindness, empathy, resilience, and perseverance.
One thing that is neat about character traits is that they can change over time. This means that a person can develop new traits during their life through different experiences and relationships. You can even choose to cultivate a certain trait!
This is important to recognize because when teaching kids about character traits you will often see a character in a book develop a new trait, or change an old trait, over time. Therefore, you can use these moments in a book to remind students that they can also develop their own character traits over time.
Character traits and personality traits
While the traits you explore with your students through literature are traits we often hope to cultivate in our students in real life, there is one difference between character traits in real life and in books to be mindful of. This is the difference between character traits and personality traits.
For example, a person might be funny. Funny is a personality trait because it does not reflect a deeper belief or how they treat others. However, when looking at how characters in books are developed, a personality trait may get identified as a character trait. In addition, physical traits may also get included as part of a character analysis when discussing a book.
The difference between character, personality and physical traits is not necessarily an important distinction to explore with young kids. However, it is an interesting one to be aware of depending on how you choose to explore the connection between character traits in real life vs fiction with your students.
Character Trait Examples
As mentioned above, some of the most common character traits are honesty, integrity, kindness, empathy, resilience, and perseverance. These are not only the most common traits talked about when describing real life people, but also characters in books.
In fact, you may have even thought of a few favorite book characters that reflect these traits while you were reading this. We know there were a few that popped into our heads while writing this.
The one we first though of was the main character in The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires. This character is an excellent example of perseverance and one we love to use when teaching students about developing a growth mindset.
In addition perseverance and the other common character traits above, there are dozens more that you may come across while reading with students. Here are some other traits that we commonly see in reading and that provide more opportunities for learning with students.
- Ambitious
- Argumentative
- Brave
- Cooperative
- Determined
- Dishonest
- Generous
- Hard worker
- Reliable
- Selfish
- Thoughtful
- Understanding
- Unselfish
You may have noticed that most of these reflect a positive character trait. However, we included some of the negative traits as well because sometimes a book will introduce a character through their negative trait first. Then, over the course of the story you and your students get to see how the character development that allows the main character to develop a different character trait by the end of the story.
5 Ways to Teach Character Traits
One of the most effective ways to teach students about character traits is through storytelling and literature. This is because characters in books are used to demonstrate the traits we want students to become aware of in real life.
In addition, after a trait is introduced in a story we have the opportunity to continue to explore it in other ways throughout the year. Below are five of the best ways we have found to teach character traits to students, that begin with storytelling.
1.Choose The Right Book
While there are many picture books that are fun to read, not all picture books effectively teach character traits. Therefore, it is important to choose a book that is intended to teach the traits you want to teach your students and will provide explicit opportunities for character analysis. In addition, be mindful to choose appropriate books so that students can more easily connect with the stories.
It is easy to find books focused on specific topics by searching the character trait you want to teach students about with a simple internet search. Moreover, most books can be used to develop several themed lessons around. Therefore, providing you with not just one lesson for the week but several quality lessons.
To help you get started, we have shared some of our favorite books below and included what trait they focus on. We have also linked these to our ready to teach read alouds so that you can grab a lesson plan today that you can use to start teaching character traits tomorrow!
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Love Monster-Valentine’s Day Book Companion
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Martin’s Big Words Read Aloud-Martin Luther King Jr. Activities
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Olive the Other Reindeer Read Aloud-Christmas Reading Comprehension Activities
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Tough Cookie PreK Book Companion Lessons-Christmas Reading Comprehension Activities
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- Engage Students in Discussion
Using guided reading is a great place to begin a discussion about character traits. Therefore, we encourage teachers to have a set of text questions they can use while reading with students. Not only do text based questions allow for kids to discuss a specific character trait, but they also help teachers assess student comprehension.
In addition to guided reading, it is important to bring students back to the text for close reading. This is why all of our read alouds are designed to be taught over several days. Inviting students back to the text is not only imoportat for character analysis, but it also reinforces the importance of revisiting the story to gather textual evidence
As you prepare to read a book, create questions that focus on the specific character trait you want to explore. Then use that to engage students in discussions about the characters’ actions and motivations. This will encourage them to identify and analyze different traits throughout the book.
This is exactly what we do in our read alouds. We create reading questions that help them explore specific character traits in detail. Moreover, text based questions that help students demonstrate their understanding of the text.
- Act Out Character Traits
Organized role-playing activities where students can act out scenarios that require them to exhibit specific character traits is wonderful. It provides a hands-on approach that allows children to personally connect with the traits they are exploring in a text. Furthermore, it provides a differentiated opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding of a text.
In our newley updated read alouds we added retelling puppets to help encourage this type of learning. Whether students are using the puppets to demonstrate how a character revealed a certain trait or to retell an important part of the story, they are a great addition to any read aloud!
- Make Personal Connections
Beyond the text it is important to allow students to connect with these traits in their own lives. For example, providing students with opportunities to reflect on a time when they persevered through a difficult situation.
While students may naturally make some of these connections while they are completing a character analysis or other character trait activity, one of the most effect ways to further this connection is through writing.
That’s why we always include a writing activity in our read aloud lesson plans. Writing not only invites students to explore personal connections with the text but also gives them practice in the act of writing.
- Positive Reinforcement and Recognition:
While literature is the best way we have found to teach character traits to kids, the learning doesn’t stop at the end of the book. After reading, it is important to reinforce the traits discussed by recognizing when students demonstrate these traits in the classroom.
Therefore, we encourage teachers to establish a classroom culture that values and celebrates positive character traits. While you can do this through fun tokens and rewards, it doesn’t have to be that formal. Simple verbal praise and acknowledgement of when students demonstrate kindness, honesty, or other desired traits is effective.
Taking time to reinforce and recognize these positive traits in your classroom will not only help with character development but also with classroom management. And, as teachers we all know that the more we can do to support classroom management the better we can teach our students!
By beginning your teaching of character traits with a good book and then carrying over the focus in day to day classroom culture, you are sure to help your students not only identify important character traits in literature but demonstrate them in their own lives.
