Student Connections to Character Traits

Do you have a source where you want students to make deeper connections between themselves and a character or between characters in texts?

Use when you want students to:

make connections between themselves and characters from a novel, short story, or other literary work, specifically focusing on character traits.
make connections across literary works.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.3
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.1

Disciplinary data literacy skills:

Data are relational, and hierarchical.
Data can be messy.
Data are interpreted, and we can even create it.
Data are not always static.

About this network

Do you have a source where you want students to make deeper connections between themselves and a character or characters, or between characters in texts? This network lets students make text-to-self and text-to-text connection.

SUCCESS STORIES: Teachers who have used this type of network have found it successful for helping students to learn about character traits; make connections between literary characters, themselves, and the people around them; relate thematic connections between characters from one or more stories to real-world examples and personal experiences.

TEXTS THAT WORK: Sources where characters display many different character traits--both positive and negative. Used across several sources, this network can help remind students of previous characters they encountered months or weeks ago.

Play with a sample network

A sample network with data from As Brave As You

Explore the network by dragging nodes around, looking at the details for a few nodes and edges, and opening up the Nodes and Edges tables.

Network Details: What should my students and I be tracking?

For any network, students will track nodes (things) and edges (relationships between things), each of which will also have "attributes" (which include mandatory info like citations and optional info like extra notes).

Nodes (things being connected)

In this network, the nodes represent characters, character traits, emotions that the characters have, and (optionally) when students experience the same trait or emotion.

Character
A character from a fictional source. For example, when reading the book *The Book Thief*, a character node might be Liesel (the fictional main character of the book) or Adolf Hitler.
Trait
A descriptive word or short phrase that characterizes a long-term behavioral, emotional or other trait. For example, Liesel in The Book Thief is 'defensive'. Students might also include notes that further explain the Trait. For example, Liesel is defensive because she was orphaned as a child and has a hard time trusting other people as a result.
Emotion
A descriptive word or short phrase that expresses a temporary feeling that happens at a specific moment in the fictional source (i.e. an emotion is less long-term than a trait). For example, early The Book Thief, a character named Rudy shows Liesel compassion and she experiences a brief moment of trust.
Student Experience (optional)
A short description of a moment in which a student had an experience that aligns with something in the fictional source. For example, a student who has been treated with compassion by a friend might create a 'friend treated me compassionately' node, just as Rudy did to Liesel in The Book Thief.

Edges (connection types)

In this network, the edges connect characters or student experiences to traits and emotions that describe the characters or the experience the student had.

is or feels
You would use 'is or feels' to connect a node (likely a character or student experience) to an emotion or trait describing the character or experience. For example, there might be an edge showing 'Liesel' - 'is or feels' - 'defensive' if the network is about character traits in The Book Thief.

What learning goals does this template support?

Disciplinary Standards
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.3	Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.1	Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Disciplinary Data Literacy Goals
Data are relational, and hierarchical.	Students will cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including identifying internal conflicts in the data collected from different kinds of historical sources.
Data can be messy.	Students will choose specific character traits and quotes from primary sources and enter them into a network, allowing them to explore their and their peer's interpretation of historical figures' traits in the context of both the original narrative and the data their peers entered. Creating the network themselves can help them appreciate that all visualizations are created by someone with ideas, interests, and biases.
Data are interpreted, and we can even create it.	As we create our data, we may disagree, which impacts interpretation. We need to figure out how to resolve and interpret that.
Data are not always static.	We are changing this data as we discuss our interpretations and revise them.

Lesson-Specific Resources and Examples

The following files are in PowerPoint .PPTX and Word .DOCX format. If you use Google Docs, you should be able to import these into Google Slides and Google Docs with minimal formatting changes.

Character and Student Traits in Alice in Wonderland and Looking Glass Wars

Character Traits in Walk Two Moons and Roll of Thunder

Teacher Slides

How to integrate this lesson into your classroom: two class periods. One to get students used to the network as they identify and enter character traits and their sources. The second class period provides time to revise/add additional traits and discuss the patterns students see in the traits, characters, and student experiences they entered

General Net.Create Tips, Tricks and Documentation

Quick Tips

Citations matter!	The *Provenance* tab can help your students find and vet evidence.
Your comments can guide students.	Use the *comment* feature to call student attention to specific actions they can take to understand the content and data-literacy learning you're doing
Break data entry and analysis into two lessons	Node-and-edge entry on day one can give you time to focus on student reading comprehension. A second lesson using node/edge gravity, tables and the "Analysis" tab can help with content analysis and data-literacy learning. Check out the “Why Use Networks” slide in the slide deck in Downloadable Resources section below.
Treat mistakes as valuable data-literacy and content-learning moves.	If you see nodes or edges that don’t help with your lesson, point them out and help students find a way to revise them to address the lesson plan.
Remember that data are about individual people.	Chat with your students about how to be respectful of their peers as they enter network data.

Downloadable Resources

Network-analysis teaching slides with terms, visual guides, and a "why networks" slide
Good questions to ask your students during a Net.Create lesson
Advice from Experienced Net.Create Middle-School Teachers: Our partner teachers who have used Net.Create extensively in their own middle-school classrooms prepped a short set of recommendations for getting comfortable with Net.Create, prepping effective lessons and handling common classroom-management needs.

Net.Create User Guide

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