Remote programs have their pros and cons. While they are fantastic for accessibility, allowing kids to participate in programming regardless of their location, it can be hard to build connections and encourage participation when there’s a screen in between you and your audience.
We learned a lot about our group of young writers at our first session, and my co-facilitator and I reworked our lesson plan for the following week to hopefully better engage and support our learners. We found that kids had trouble at times hearing what we were saying through their headphones, so we reworked our slide show to include more visual examples, as well as written instructions for every activity. We also included more variety in how we elicited feedback – we added polls, multiple choice questions, open-ended questions, fill-in-the-blank questions – all to encourage kids to think about character development and interact in ways that feel comfortable, as most of our participants prefer to write their responses rather than speak in front of their peers.
This is what programming is all about, really, whether you’re working with kiddos, teens, adults or all of the above. Try new things, learn what works and what doesn’t for each group, be flexible and open to new ideas, and always strive to improve.
And now, to the actual subject matter of today’s program: character development!
When planning my activities I often follow a teaching format I learned from my CELTA training: PPP – Present, Practice, Produce. This is what that format looked like this time around:
Present : After our ice breaker activity (“Which fictional character would you most want to meet, and why?”) my colleague and I talked about why character descriptions matter, looked at how we can effectively describe characters, and read character descriptions from some well-known children’s books.
Practice : Next we played a guessing game in which we described different popular characters from children’s media and had the children guess each character’s identity.
Practice : We provided a character description template and invited kids to pick a favourite existing character and describe them as fully as possible, including personality traits and background information.
Produce : Finally, it was time for our budding writers to create their own characters, using the same template from the previous exercise to make up an imaginary character all their own.
The idea behind the PPP model is to prepare students for success. Rather than throwing them into the proverbial deep end and expecting them to immediately produce results, you’re gradually building their skill set, allowing them build confidence through practice exercises before inviting them to use that information to produce original work.
Depending on the age or language level of the group, you might spend more or less time on each P. Our group tends to skew younger, so we spent a lot of time in the practice section with guided writing prompts and closed activities. With an older group, you might spend the majority of your time in the produce section, providing more opportunities for independent, self-guided creative writing. It’s entirely up to your group, your material, your setting, and your teaching style.
Next week we move on to the world of plot structure!