Once again the heart-warming character, Amelia Bedelia, was a huge hit with our third-grade students this year. Amelia Bedelia and her stories were the perfect resource in helping our students to analyze a character, determine the meanings of idioms and homonyms, compare and contrast plot events, and write an opinion essay.
In this blog, we will share two of our highly engaging activities with you.
After reading and discussing Amelia Bedelia, Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping, and Come Back, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, we introduced our students to how to analyze a character's traits. We emphasized the difference between a character's traits and a character's feelings. Here is a link to a PowToon video that effectively explains this concept.
Our students then read a variety of Amelia Bedelia books during reading workshop. As they read, the students completed a Character Analysis/Character Trait web created by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnel. They were asked to determine one character trait of Amelia Bedelia, as well as write evidence from the story that supports it, for each book read.
Once the students began to know Amelia Bedelia on a deeper level, we asked them to use Comic Life 2 to create a situation where Amelia Bedelia is confusing multiple meaning words. They had to take the perspective of Amelia Bedelia and the other character(s) involved. This activity also required the students to understand two or three meanings of a homonym. The students had a ball! We could not believe how creative they could be their first time on Comic Life!
The second activity involved students in making a character trait slide show. They used Google Slides and their character analysis web to demonstrate their understanding of how to identify character traits. They were so motivated and engaged in this activity that they did not want to stop. They worked for over an hour!
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| This is just one slide out of 5! |
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| This is one of the first of several slides. |
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| This is an introduction page that includes the students' opinion of Amelia Bedelia. |
Next week we will wrap up the Amelia Bedelia unit by writing our opinions to the question, Would you like to work with Amelia Bedelia? We will also complete a Venn diagram and write a compare/contrast paragraph about two of the Amelia Bedelia books we read.
We hope you are experiencing the same unusual spring-like weather we are having here in Lombard, Illinois. It really is invigorating.
Until next time,
Kim and Anne
