This Lesson's Title:

Character Impressions

creating a scene and a character while establishing a mood with word choices

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Marie Affinito at an AT&T-sponsored in-service class for teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 2 of the book.

Check out The Great Gatsby at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses revealing details and diction in order to bring characters alive and create an overall mood or impression. In this lesson, students will analyze a passage by identifying words, details, phrases, and dialogue that create opinions and contribute to an overall mood or tone. After analyzing Fitzgerald’s techniques, students will write a scene, poem, or song that reveals the personality of a person or character and creates mood through the use of showing details. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait for this assignment is idea development since students will be focusing on interesting and accurate showing details that also establish tone and mood while revealing people, characters, and settings. The support trait for this writing assignment is word choice since students will be considering the effect of precise and revealing adjectives.