This activity is based on Amy Lenord’s Superhero Talk Read Talk Write Lesson. I took elements of her lesson and adapted them to suit a 7th grade French class. When I taught this lesson, students were working with adjectives and using the verb “to be” in context. While the goal with Amy’s lesson was to have students work with an authentic text, I chose to create the text for my lesson.
I liked the idea of having students take a personality type quiz, since this piques their interest, so they will be more compelled to read the text carefully. I decided to go with Disney characters since I felt I could flesh out their difference better in the quizzes I was making. I made a quiz for male characters and one for female characters. Students could take whichever one they wanted or even both, but this way students could be matched up with a same-gender character if they wanted to be. You can try them out yourself below (the first one is for boys, the second one for girls):
After students took the quiz, I had them decide if they felt they like the character to whom they had been assigned or would prefer to identify with a different character. In Amy’s lesson, she had students discuss with a partner if they agreed or disagreed with the results, but this proved a bit too challenging for my students. I had them look at the below list of adjectives. They had to circle 5 adjectives that described them, then x out 5 adjectives that really didn’t describe them. Then, they put a star next to 5 adjectives that described their character (the one they were assigned or a different one), and an x next to 5 adjectives that really didn’t describe their character. These adjectives might be some of the same ones they chose for themselves, but some may be different.
After looking over the adjectives, students started on the venn diagram below, comparing and contrasting themselves with their character. They could use they adjectives they circled, but they could also add additional ones.
Students finished the venn diagram for homework and read the results to each other the next day, as their partners tried guess which character they had chosen.
While I really went in my own direction with this lesson, the inspiration comes from Amy’s creative idea. How might you further adapt this idea to suit your own classroom?
