What Are Story Characters?

One of the first narrative elements we teach to our littlest learners is characters. Characters can be animals, people, non-living things and make-believe creatures. Characters can talk, have thoughts and have feelings. Objects or things that do not talk, have thoughts or have feelings are not characters.

This projectable digital activity has been designed to help your students consolidate their understanding of story characters and non-characters. It contains 19 different drag-and-drop activity slides and three brain-break slides to keep your little learners engaged throughout!

The drag-and-drop activities can be separated into two categories:

• Activity 1 – Students look at the pictures, then drag and drop the character picture into the ‘Character’ category and the non-character picture into the ‘Not a character’ category. 
• Activity 2 – Students read each category, then drag and drop each picture into the right character category. One picture that does not fit in any category will be left over.

Extend This Story Characters Activity

This resource looks deceptively simple at first glance… but there are multiple options for further learning opportunities!

Use each slide as an opportunity for more detailed discussions about story characters. As students are sorting the images into characters and non-characters, have them justify their opinions as to why each image belongs in each category.

After completing the activity, choose one of the characters from the resource to explore further as a class. Encourage the students to think about internal and external traits. What does the character look like? What might their personality be?

Digital Lessons Made Easy… Just Download, Project, Teach!

Use the Download button to access the Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides version of this resource.

Be sure to use this presentation in Edit mode in order to enable the drag-and-drop features.

This resource was created by Lisamarie Del Valle, a Teach Starter collaborator.

Click below for more time-saving story elements resources!

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