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What’s in a Name?

This pre- and during reading activity enables students to make judgments about the characters in a story. They will begin to weave a plot based solely on the names of the characters.

Strategies/Skills Used

Reading Strategy 2: Predict what will be learned or what will happen.
Reading Strategy 4: Self-monitor and self-correct.
Reading Strategy 5: Make mental pictures.

teaching-the-activity-1
(1) Present the names of the main characters in the story. Two is enough.

(2) Ask students to brainstorm, individually or in pairs, what those characters might be like. Suggest that they consider the characters’ appearances, personalities, ages, living spaces, and so forth. Share and record this information as a class.

(3) Read the story and have students confirm or reject their version as the story proceeds.

Note: This activity only works if none of the students are familiar with the book.

Header-Reading-Writing-Connect-Activities-2
Primary
  • Help! A Story of Friendship
  • The Name Jar
Intermediate
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Secondary
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  • Anticipation Guide
  • Barrier Games
  • Book Walk
  • Bookmark
  • Brainstorming
  • Bubble Thinking
  • Building from Clues
  • Cause and Effect
  • Character Web
  • Collaborative Summaries
  • Concept Circles
  • Directed Reading/Thinking
  • Graphing
  • Guided Imagery (Primary)
  • Guided Imagery (Secondary)
  • Jigsaw
  • Judge and Jury
  • Know-Wonder-Learn
  • Listen-Sketch-Predict
  • Memoir
  • Mood Swing
  • Oral Retelling
  • Paper Bag Presentation
  • Picture Book Analysis
  • Picture Walk
  • Plot Profile – Story Graph
  • Plot Profile – Story Map
  • Question / Answer Relationship
  • Question and Revise
  • Read-Draw-Confirm
  • Reading Like an Author
  • Response Logs/Reflective Journal
  • Say Something
  • Semantic Mapping/Webbing
  • Snatching a Series
  • Sociogram
  • Sort and Predict
  • Sound Effects
  • Split Images
  • Story Board
  • Story Cycles
  • Story Grammar
  • Tableaux
  • Think Aloud/Public Thinking
  • Thinking Boxes
  • Thinking Like an Author
  • Thinking While Reading
  • Venn Diagram
  • Vocabulary Rating
  • Vocabulary Self-Collection
  • What’s in a Name?
  • What’s Inside?
  • Who Said What?
  • Word Wall

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Literacy 44 by North Vancouver School District is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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