Character Acrostic

What is a character acrostic?

An acrostic is a poem where the first letters of each line spell out a word read downwards. A character acrostic uses a character's name, so each line has to say something about that character and begin with the right letter. It is a description activity with a constraint bolted on, and the constraint is what makes it worth doing.

How do you stop it being a list of adjectives?

This is the whole problem with acrostics and it is why they have a slightly poor reputation. Left alone, children produce Brave, Angry, Rude and have said nothing that required reading the book.

Three rules fix it, and they are worth putting on the board before anyone starts:

1. At most two lines may be a single adjective. The rest have to be a phrase.
2. At least two lines must refer to something that actually happens in the book — a moment, a choice, a thing they said.
3. No line may be true of every character. "Kind to his friends" is true of half the cast; it is not doing any work.

The third rule is the strongest of them, because it forces children to think about what makes this character not the others — which is the actual comprehension objective hiding inside a poetry task.

What do you do about the awkward letters?

Every acrostic runs into an X, a Z, a Q or an awkward second E, and how you handle it decides whether the lesson ends well. Options, in the order I would offer them:

• Let the letter appear anywhere in the first word, not just at the start. Slightly impure and it keeps the writing honest.
• Use the character's first name only, or a nickname the book actually uses.
• Allow a whole phrase to start with the letter — "Never once asks for help" is a good line and an easy N.
• Keep a small bank of useful openers on the wall for the hard letters: Xtremely is not allowed; eXactly the kind of person who… is fine.

What you should not do is let a child spend fifteen minutes stuck on one letter while the rest of the poem goes unwritten. Tell them to leave it and come back — the surrounding lines usually solve it.

Which characters work best?

Names of five to eight letters. Shorter than five and there is not enough room to say anything; longer than about nine and the last few lines are filler. If the name is very long, use the surname or the title — The Warden rather than her full name, Mr Fox rather than Fantastic Mr Fox.

Which year groups is it for?

Year 2 upwards. In Year 2 and 3, a single word per line is fine and the goal is simply finding words that fit and are true. From Year 4, apply the three rules and expect phrases. In Years 5 and 6, require a line that refers to a change in the character across the book — that one line is worth more than the other six put together, and it stops the activity being a description exercise.