Characters

Over the past few weeks we've had discussions about the characters we're reading about in our stories.  We've talked about inside traits and outside traits.  As a class we're learning about how characters drive a story and keep it moving along.  Today the students were asked to create a paragraph explaining how a character changed in the story we read the last two days.  The story is Pepita Talks Twice.  Tonight I will be printing out every groups' paragraph.  Tomorrow each partnership will read each of these paragraphs.  As a whole class we will pick out the ones that we feel are the most detailed and well-written.  Below are two paragraphs that are at the rough draft stage.

Maddie and Joel                           

In the beginning, Pepita helped people by speaking twice. She translated from person to person.  She helped translate for people, but she didn’t want to help them anymore.   On pg. 50 Pepita said “I will never speak Spanish again”.  Pepita kept her promise, but she realized she couldn’t say and do everything she did before, like she couldn’t say enchilada, taco, sing happy birthday in Spanish, say tamales or any Spanish names like her own.  Then on pg. 61-62 she broke her promise and spoke Spanish.  On pg. 62 she said “ I am glad I talked twice”.  Pepita spoke  again, because her dog ran in the street and she didn’t want her dog to die. Her dog only understood Spanish. That is how Pepita changed in the story.

Kylie and Brayden
In the middle of the story Pepita changed by deciding not to speak Spanish.  The reason she decided not to speak was that she wanted to get home in time so she could teach her dog Lobo a trick. When she was running home people asked her  to translate for them. (By the way Pepita can speak Spanish and English.) But she helped so many people translate that when she got home her brother was already there teaching Lobo how to fetch a ball. Then it was rolling in the street.  .The way she changes is that when she was throwing the ball to  Lobo it went in the street and Lobo chased after it. A car was coming and she yelled, “LOBOOOO!!!!!!!!” Then  Lobo ran back to her (The reason that made her change was that lobo is Spanish word and Lobo understands Spanish)