Character Traits in Kindergarten and a FREEBIE

Today, I had the opportunity to introduce Character Traits to a Kindergarten class. I think one of the keys to character traits is helping the students start a vocabulary bank of character trait words and to think about what is "inside" the character. One of the students said it best--- "What is inside their heart".

We started with a very plain anchor chart with the definition and began to brainstorm character trait words.

Then, we began by talking about character traits focusing on the most important person to them -- their teacher. We used a graphic organizer. My goal was to get 3 strong character words with evidence. Evidence is hard but they did so GREAT!! They stole my heart as they described their sweet teacher.

We reread The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett and worked on character traits some more. Our focus was on Teeka the main character. I was so proud of the kids and their "academic talk" as we tackled a very difficult story. They were using details and did an excellent job discussing the problem and solution in the story as well as making inferences about Teeka. We created another character trait map about Teeka with textual evidence. I thought they did really well for their first time.

Here is a free template to use for an independent activity.

Thank you for letting me visit in Kindergarten (crossing my fingers that I can visit again really soon)!!!