Graffiti, Characterization, and Best Practices

If I have learned anything about middle school students in my time in the classroom I have learned this, middle schoolers are social and need to talk, they are active and need to move and they need variety in manageable chunks.  Today, the mini-lesson I taught centered around the four types of characters (round, flat, static, and dynamic).  After explaining what a round character is, I had the students turn and talk to their table group about a character from their favorite book, movie, or TV show.  The students had to give the character's name and explain to their peers how they knew this character was a round character.  After everyone had discussed their selections, they went to the board and simply wrote the character's name.  Next, I explained what a flat character is and showed the students a cartoon clip as an example.  I chose to use the teacher from Charlie Brown.  I then moved on to dynamic characters.  After the explanation, I repeated the strategy previously used.  The students discussed dynamic characters and recorded their thoughts.  To complete the lesson I explained the characteristics of a static character and showed them a clip from The Lion King as an example.   By having the students discuss, go to the board to record their answers, and by switching from the creation of their own examples to the sharing of my examples I broke the lesson into chunks that offered the students variety.

Below is a link to the Google presentation that I used.

https://docs.google.com/a/richland2.org/presentation/d/10Lawv91Kut5xXigfVoBmgIJvuNo15KBsHFbtqJz2pMw/edit?usp=sharing