Teaching Character’s Perspective Through Interactive Read-Alouds

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for teaching character’s perspective will find this post helpful. It includes exceptional picture book/mentor text recommendations, free teaching ideas, guided interactive reading questions, and pertinent information about each book. You’ll have everything you need to deliver engaging and meaningful interactive read-aloud lessons that will stick with students long after the lesson is over.

*Disclaimer: There are no worksheets involved in these lessons–just movement and discussion! Pick one book a day for a week’s worth of powerful lessons on character’s perspective– taught with only a book and some ingenuity. All of these books can be found at your local library, on Amazon—and quite possibly already in your classroom library or in your school’s media center just waiting for you to pluck them off the shelf.

Comparing character’s perspective is one of my favorite lessons to teach because there are so many delightful picture books that align perfectly with the skill. You can absolutely read ‘em and work ‘em (i.e. assigning a worksheet or activity after a read-aloud) but I’ve found that a simple guiding question leads itself to brilliant discussion with kids of any age and requires zero prep or paper waste.

What can books teach us about our own perspective?

Tip: Write this question on the board or chart paper so you can add thoughts to it after reading each of these books and refer back as needed.

Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose

I always introduce perspective with Hey, Little Ant because it’s written in a such a playful, catchy way that even the youngest of listeners will understand its message. Read it slowly and with great expression, pausing after each page to allow students to form or change their perspective about whether the ant should get squished.

After reading, I have students form two groups on opposing sides of the rug: Team Ant and Team Kid. Students join whichever group aligns with their perspective (most will join Team Ant, but there’s always a few magnifying-glass-insect-burners who will join Team Kid and you already know who they are).

Go back and forth asking for examples stated in the text and also for students’ own experiences with ants. Discussion should naturally lead to answering this question:

How would your perspective change if the roles were reversed?

The Pain and the Great One by Judy Blume

Here’s another Team vs. Team perspective showdown with Judy Blume’s classic tale of sibling rivalry. Students LOVE The Pain and the Great One because they form a tight alliance with either Team Pain or Team Great One right away due to their own sibling experiences.

After reading, make a Human Venn Diagram. You can do this by placing masking tape on the floor with three columns instead of circles. Designate one column as the Pain column, one column as the Great One column, and the one in the middle as shared perspectives.

Call on a student from Team Pain to give an example of why his sister thinks she’s so great from the book. Once he’s stated his reason he can take a seat in the Pain column of the Human Venn. Call on a student from Team Great One to give an example of why her brother is such a pain. Go back and forth until reasons are exhausted, or columns are full of antsy kids. The BEST part comes at the end when you ask how their perspectives about each other are ALIKE. Deep thinking caps are needed for this! Students should say that both the Pain and the Great One think that their parents love the other one better than him/her. They also realize that when given time to themselves (either staying up late or playing blocks), that it’s not any fun without the other one. You will be discussing this for hours! Make sure you ask your students who do not have siblings whose perspective they agree with and why.

How are our perspectives alike and different?

They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel

This book is brilliant and really gets students thinking right off the bat. I start by asking students their various perspectives about cats. The cat lovers will say they are fluffy and soft and oh-so-adorable. The indifferent ones will say they are loners and mysterious. And if I’m lucky, I may have a few that downright despise cats. “Lucky” because it will make my point very easy to teach. “Cats are mean and boring,” a student piped up last week. When prompted to explain why he had this point of view, he explained that 1.) He was allergic to them, and cat dander sent him into a wild fit of misery and 2.) He was scratched by a cat when he was little and now he believes all cats are terrible, vicious creatures. Bingo.

What I try to get at before we even start reading is that our perspective about something is influenced by our feelings which are influenced by our experiences. Your perspective can change depending on how you feel about that thing.

Again, take your time reading aloud, allowing plenty of time to notice how the cat changes through each animal’s point of view. After reading, I pair up students and whisper a different animal from the book to each pair. I give them a few minutes to discuss together what that particular animal thinks and feels about the cat and then it’s show time! Partners stand up. One partner speaks from the first person point of view as if he was that animal and the other acts it out as a silent mime while he is speaking. After their super short little monologue the class tries to guess which animal’s point of view they took. It’s an amusing way to extend the discussion, as you’ll no doubt chuckle at their terrible miming skills.

How do our experiences influence our perspective?

Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young is short and spectacular with a Caldecott Medal to boot.  All of the blind mice have completely different perspectives, but that’s because they are only seeing part of the whole. The last mouse takes the time to journey his way across the entire object and then combines all of the viewpoints together to see the whole before determining his own perspective.

I have students think of an object that they can easily draw. Pairing up with a partner, each student has his own whiteboard/marker or paper/pencil. They take turns drawing only a small part of the picture until their partner is able to see the whole and guess what it is. Don’t drag this out; it’s meant to be short and sweet and fun and then followed up with a discussion about how we can apply this learning about seeing the whole before forming our own perspectives.

Sidenote: This is such a great segue to one of Mo Willems’ BEST (IMO) books—That is Not a Good Idea (you’ll definitely want a copy for your collection!). It points out perfectly, hilariously, and quite shockingly what can happen if we prematurely form a perspective before seeing the whole picture.

Why should you see the whole picture before forming a perspective?

Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne

Voices in the Park is told in four different points of view about a trip to the park. Prep students by telling them that this book requires their absolute tip-top, first rate, A-Game Noticing Skills because the illustrations are overflowing with items to notice. Some of these will make complete sense, but most of them are quite bizarre and will raise big questions. {One year I typed up all the questions we had about the book with the intention of sending them to Anthony Browne because we NEEDED answers, but there were more pressing matters to attend to and time disappeared and I never bothered to get a stamp and then the moment was gone and it sat in my drawer sad and unsent. Ah, teacher life.}

Choose four students to be volunteers. You can give them a name tag for each voice in the book. Or don’t. It’s up to you. Here are the names my students chose:

• “Mean Mom”
• “Sad Dad”
• Smudge
• Charles

Point at each volunteer and ask students to describe his/her character traits. Then ask them to state his/her perspective about the park and how they know. Then pose some “What if” questions.

What if Sad Dad got a really good job? How would his perspective about the park change?

What if Charles talked to his mom about how her restrictions were making him unhappy? Would either of their perspectives about the park change?

Ask for students to pose their own What-If questions. If time allows, generate a giant list of questions you have about the book and send to Anthony Browne! (If you do this, will you please ask him why he included Mary Poppins and King Kong—it can’t be random!—so that I can finally sleep at night??) I’ve already looked up the address so you don’t have to:

Anthony Browne, c/o Walker Books Ltd, 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

Be prepared to leave this book on display because students will want to peruse and discover more oddities in the illustrations on their own time.

What can we learn about someone else’s perspective by seeing the world through their eyes?

Here are some other absolutely brilliant mentor texts to read aloud to students when teaching character’s perspective. Be sure to put them on reserve at the library or add them to your classroom library–I guarantee they will be picked up again and again!

 Do you have any favorite books for teaching character’s perspective? I’d love to hear about them!

yours in reading,
rawley