Picture books are powerful tools for learning. More than just words, the illustrations offer nuances into the story, the place, the characters and the tone of the message. This is what makes picture books so theatrical and so exciting to use as a teaching tool.
Picture books can be used to create role play and drama improvisation activities as well as to explore positive and negative character traits for social emotional learning
In this article I present ideas on how to use picture books to creatively engage students in SEL focusing on undertstanding positive and negative character traits and how people in real life as well as characters in a story reveal their character traits through their actions, words, relationships and interactions.
First let’s identify the difference between a character and a personality trait. Personality Traits are external traits that are visible to the outside world. Personality traits are revealed by your choice of clothes, hair style, colors you wear, profession you choose, books you read, your hobbies, favorite foods, favorite music. A person can be eccentric, loud, quiet, stylish, traditional, wityy, funny, serious, studious, fun-loving. These are all personality traits that are visible to another relatively soon after meeting someone. Personality makes you distinct but does not reveal if they are kind, mean, humble, honest, trustworthy etc.
Character Traits on the other hand are internal traits that are not immediately visible to the outside world. They reflect your inner world, your values and your beliefs. Character traits are revealed by the way you act, speak, by your behavior in relation to others. Character traits that lead to discord, unhappiness, bad feeling in yourself or others are negative character traits. Positive character traits lead to good relations between people and a more harmonious world. Traits such as honesty, responsibility, respectfulness, generosity, compassion, reliability, are examples of positive traits, Traits such as dishonesty, irresponsibility, stinginess, inconsiderateness, unreliability, are examples of negative character traits.
Here’s an idea you can try in your K-5 classrooms to help students understand the difference between positive and negative character traits, how actions and words reveal them and even how to turn a negative character trait into a positive one through behavioral changes.
Step 1: Choose a picture book with a story that depicts one or more characters. Read it together with the class.
Step 2: Discuss the characters in the story and identify their character traits vs. their personality traits.
Step 3: Create a Positive and Negative Character Trait Box: Brainstorm with the class to list positive and negative traits, write them on POST-ITS and place them in the appropriate box. (See Benjamin’s Spall article the ultimate character trait list for a reference: https://benjaminspall.com/character-traits/ )
Step 4. Break into student groups. Each group picks a trait from the Positive and a trait from the Negative box.
Step 5. Improvise a scene. Each group will improvise and create a scene that demonstrates the positive and negative trait they’ve chosen. They can depict the scene useing characters from the picture book, or optionally they can create their own characters.
Step 6. Each group performs their scene and the class has to guess which trait is being depicted.
Summary: Picture books, role play and theater are powerful tools for learning. Through role play students develop deeper understanding about themselves and others. By depicting a character trait using role play, theater and improvisation, children begin to understand the consequences of their actions, words and choices and how their choices represent them to the outside world and themselves.
Check out the Booksicals.com website for turn-key arts-based learning curriculum that uses musical theater, dance, drama improv and other art forms for social emotional development activities.