Introduction
Stories become more interesting when we understand what a character is thinking, feeling, saying, and doing. Readers are able figure out a character’s perspective just by looking closely at clues in a literary text.
Students will use the FAST strategy to analyze character perspective. What "FAST" stands for is as follows:
F – Feelings (How does the character feel?)
A – Actions (What does the character do?)
S – Sayings (What does the character say?)
T – Thoughts (What is the character thinking?)
Students will annotate the text to identify these clues and determine how different characters view events in the story.
Some guided reading questions are as follows:
1. How can we determine a character’s perspective in a story?
2. How do a character’s feelings, actions, sayings, and thoughts help us understand their point of view and how they are feeling?
3. How can annotating the text help readers better understand characters?
The learning objective is as follows:
Students will determine a character’s perspective by identifying and annotating feelings, actions, sayings, and thoughts (FAST) in a text and using those details to explain the character’s point of view.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Students will identify, analyze, and explain character perspective using textual evidence.
Task
Students will work in small groups to analyze a story using the FAST method.
Each group will will do as follows:
- Read the short story: The Law of Club and Fang: An excerpt from the book "The Call of The Wild"
- Annotate the text by identifying examples of Feelings, Actions, Sayings and Thoughts
- Use their annotations to determine Buck's perspective on his new life in the Wild.
- Create a PowerPoint presentation explaining the character’s perspective using evidence from the text.
The presentation must include:
1. A summary of the story
2/ Examples of FAST annotations
3. Text evidence showing the character’s feelings, actions, sayings, and thoughts
4. An explanation of the character’s perspective
5. illustrations or highlighted examples from the text
Process
Step 1
Read the assigned story carefully: Chunking
Step 2
As you read, annotate the text by marking examples of FAST:
- Highlight Feelings Yellow
- Circle Actions
- Underline Sayings (dialogue)
- Put a box around Thoughts
Step 3
Turn and Talk with your group how these clues help reveal the character’s perspective.
Step 4
Complete a FAST graphic organizer to organize your annotations.
Step 5
Work with your group to create a PowerPoint explaining the character’s perspective using your FAST annotations.
Step 6
Prepare to present your PowerPoint to the class.
Group Roles
Reader will read the passage and helps identify clues
Annotator will mark FAST clues in the text
Evidence Finder (Detective) selects strong text evidence
Presenter will explain the group’s findings
Evaluation
Your project will be graded using the following rubric:
4 Exceeds Expectations
Clearly identifies and annotates all FAST elements. Presentation clearly explains the character’s perspective with strong text evidence and clear organization.
3 Completed
Identifies most FAST elements and explains the character’s perspective with some text evidence.
2 Developing (could use some work)
Identifies some FAST elements but explanations of perspective are unclear or missing evidence.
1 Insufficient amount of annotations not thoroughly grasping the concept of Character Perspective
Limited FAST annotations and little understanding of character perspective.
Conclusion
Understanding character perspective helps the reader better understand the events of a story. By using the FAST strategy and annotating the text, readers can figure out how characters feel, think, speak, and act.
These clues help readers determine WHY characters respond to events in different ways.
An enrichment assignment can be accessed using the website CommonLit.com if teaching 5th grade students, I will assign a passage on 6th or 7th grade level.
To practice analyzing character perspective, visit CommonLit and read a short story of your choice.
As you read, annotate the text using the FAST method by identifying:
Choose a short story on CommonLit and read the passage carefully. As you read, annotate the text using the FAST strategy by identifying the character’s:
- Feelings
- Actions
- Sayings
- Thoughts
After reading, answer the comprehension questions and write a short explanation describing the character’s perspective using evidence from the text.
Access CommonLit here:
https://www.commonlit.org