Introduction
Do you like money and a little friendly competition? If so, you aren't alone. Greg Kenton loves making money and having a competition with his annoying neighbor Maura. That all changes when he finds out that she's creating her own illustrated minibooks, which means Greg is no longer the only one making them. He is ready to declare war!
But after realizing Maura books are pretty good, Greg and Maura become business partners. Everything seems to be going well until trouble arises at school. The school bans them from selling their minibooks!
Throughout the book, there are many ups and downs which allows the characters to feel a different way during certain points in the book. As a reader, it's important for you to be able to understand how each character is feeling throughout the story. Sometimes the author doesn't say how the characters are feeling so it our job as the reader to make inferences, guessing, how the characters are feeling. You can make these inferences by looking for clues in the book.
Task
Brainstorm a few ways readers can figure out how a character is feeling.
Got a few ideas? Great! Well, here are some of mine I'd like to share. We can look at what the characters are saying, "I think..", "I feel..". We can also look for how they are saying this, "he screamed loudly", "she cried at night". Another way we can make an inference about the character's feelings is through their body language, "her head hung low", "he slumped against the wall".
During this task, you are going to focus on three events; Greg finds out about Maura's minibooks (Chapter..), Greg and Maura become a team (Chapter..), and the school bans the friends from selling their minibooks (Chapter..).
Step 1: Look through Chapter .. to find words, phrases, or sentences that give you a clue about how each character is feeling during the first event. Write those clues on the "Clues Worksheet". Repeat this step with Chapter .. and Chapter .. to find those clues for events two and three. Write those clues on the same worksheet in the space provided.
Step 2: Using the "Inferences and Reasoning" worksheet, you are going to write three short paragraphs to explain how you think each character was feeling during the event and why. Paragraph one should be about event one, paragrah two should be about event two, and so on.
Process
These are the worksheets you will use to complete your tasks.
"Clues Worksheet" is used during step one and "Inferences and Reasoning" is used during step two.
file:///C:/Users/ccrey/Documents/Clues%20Worksheet.pdf
file:///C:/Users/ccrey/Documents/Inferences%20and%20Reasoning.pdf
Evaluation
I will be evaluating each step of this tasks.
In step one, I will look at your "Clues" worksheet and see if you came up with words, phrases, or sentences that help you inference how the character is feeling.
For your second step, I will be grading your paragraphs. In each paragraph, I should see how you think each character was feeling during the event and your reasoning why. When you explain why, you should be using some of your answers from step one.
Step one is worth a total of 12 points, four points per column.
Step two is worth a total of 18 points, 6 points for each paragraph (3 for inference and 3 for reasoning).
That brings the total points possible to 30.
Conclusion
Great job using those clues in the book to make inferences about the character's feelings. Remember to continue to use those skills when you read other books.
Credits
I got this idea from another WebQuest that used the book "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing".