Character Sketches

Today we began brainstorming for our first writing assignment, which is to make a character sketch. To help the students understand what is expected of them we do one together. I explain to the students that they first want to generate a few ideas of what to write about and narrow those ideas down to one. I ask the children to help me come up with some ideas, so I call on some of the students.

Person 1: I call on Joseph and he responds, "Selena Gomez."

I begin to write on he board Celina Gomez. Although I have heard of the name before, I do not have cable and I do not keep up with teen celebrities. When writing the name I decided that maybe it is best to write C-E-L-I-N-A because it sounded close to the name Celine. The children were insulted, mostly the boys because of course some of them like Raphael were quick to say, "How can you do that Ms. J., I ♥ Selena Gomez. I decide to continue on with my lesson.


Person 2: I call on Cronius and he says, "K'neen."

Don't ask, I still have no idea who this person is.


Person 3: I call on Aaron, who says, "Gizmo."

Now Gizmo is our class hamster, so I write Gizmo's name on that board.


Person 4: I call on Ralph, who says, "How about Ralph?"

Yes, my student just nominated himself to be the person that we write our character sketch about.


Person 5: By this time I have called four boys, so I decide to pick a girl, Melanie, she says "Johnny Depp."

In my mind, I'm think ooh, we have a good person for our character sketch.


Now, that we have generated ideas, I tell the kids I want to pick the person that will be easiest for me to write about. I tell the kids that I'm sorry Selena Gomez and K'neen have to go, because I really don't know much about these people. I then take Gizmo off the list and say it would be hard to write a character sketch on our class pet and it would be much easier to use a person. The choices we are left with are Ralph and Johnny Depp. Being a nice teacher I take a class vote and of course we are a classroom full of boys, so we began brainstorming ideas to write about Ralph. I go through how to brainstorm and set the children loose to begin brainstorming their own character sketch.

Half way through the assignment Agnes comes to me, "Ms. J. I am going to do my character sketch on Joseph and there is something I want to write down, but I'm not sure it will be appropriate." As a teacher you hear this, you immediately think it probably isn't appropriate. I write down a word on the paper and ask Agnes if this is the word she would like to use, she says, "yes."

"Well, by writing that word down you know that the other children will see this, right?"

"Yes, Ms. J. but they know this already."

"Maybe we should ask Joseph how he would feel about this because he may not feel to comfortable with you writing this."

I call Joseph over to us, Agnes immediately begins to blush. I show Joseph the word, cute, and asks him if it will be okay if Agnes includes this in her paper.

Joseph asks, "What exactly does it mean?"

I write on the paper good looking.

Joseph is fine with Agnes writing this and now the fourth grade love is beginning. Thankfully in the lunchroom the children are still split like the Red Sea, girls on one side and boys on the other. Hopefully this year we will not have another proposal like we did last year.