A Gift for Your Favorite Character Reading Assignment

I'm constantly looking for new ways to assess my students' comprehension, especially when it comes to independent reading. I love my tic-tac-toe reading response boards, but I don't want students to grow tired of them so at least once a quarter, I like to throw in something different.

In December (oh yes, I know it's February, but I'm in catch-up mode), my teammate and I were in need of a fun in-class assignment that would keep students engaged as they counted down the days until the winter break. We were also in great need of a bulletin board. I don't know why, but the need for a bulletin board really gets my wheels turning! Since we were focusing on narrative elements, I thought it would be great to narrow in on characters. After tossing the idea around a bit, I came up with A Gift for Your Favorite Character.

For this assignment, students were asked to choose a favorite character from the book that they were reading independently and think about a gift that they would give to that character. Of course, it couldn't be just ANY gift, it had to be a gift that was specific to that character based on what they had learned from their reading. They had to choose a character and explain why they chose that character first. Then they had to share the gift that they chose and explain why they chose what they did for their character.

When I shared the assignment, my students were super excited! I was looking for engagement, and I really got it. I was really impressed with how well my students did with the assignment. Here's a peek at a few:





Now, we did this at Christmas time, but the great thing about this is that you could really do it anytime. I loved how awesome our bulletin board looked with our Christmas theme, but I would definitely do it during any season! I hung their decorated "gifts" on top, with the gift inside, and the writing paper hanging below. We had lots of compliments from other staff that stopped to read them!



You can find my creation in my TpT store by clicking the image below!








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2 comments

  1. How fun! I love this idea! I bet it was fun to read your students' responses!

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    1. It really was! In the one in the second picture above, she chose Melody from Out of My Mind and wanted to give her brother back to her because he passed away. I had big tears when I read that one! They did amazing!

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