Character Traits

What are character traits?

A character trait is a lasting quality of a person in a story - brave, secretive, generous, stubborn. It describes what someone is like over time, as opposed to how they happen to feel in one scene. Naming traits accurately, and backing each one with evidence, is a core part of reading comprehension throughout primary.

What is the difference between a trait and a feeling?

A feeling is temporary and caused by something; a trait persists across the book. A character can be frightened in chapter four without being a fearful person, and children mix these up constantly. The quick test: could this word still be true three chapters later, with nothing happening? If yes, it is a trait. If it needs an event to be true, it is a feeling.

Traits are also different from motives. A trait is what someone is like; a motive is what they want. The three together - feeling, trait, motive - are most of what primary character work consists of, and it is worth teaching children to tell them apart explicitly.

Why sort into always, sometimes and never?

Because a plain list of adjectives lets children get away with a cardboard character. Put brave in the middle ring and you have claimed the character is always brave - and then someone remembers the chapter where they ran away. Moving it out to sometimes is a better answer, and getting there required rereading.

The outer ring does its own work. What a character is never is often the sharpest observation available: a villain who is never cruel for fun, a hero who is never honest. Children rarely think to ask that question until the diagram makes them.

How do you find evidence for a trait?

Look at what a character does rather than what the author says about them, hunt for a contradicting moment before accepting any word, and require two separate moments for anything permanent. One event is a feeling; a pattern is a trait.

1. Actions, not descriptions. What the author says about a character is worth less than what the character does.
2. Look for the exception first. Before accepting a middle-ring word, hunt for one moment that contradicts it. If you find one, it moves out.
3. Two moments minimum for the middle ring. One event is a feeling; a pattern is a trait.
4. For the never ring, evidence is absence - and that is genuinely harder. Accept "I looked and it never happens" as a real answer, because noticing an absence is a sophisticated thing to do.

Where do the words come from?

Give a word bank or you will get nice, mean and funny thirty times. A feelings wheel works well as a source, and so does simply harvesting adjectives from the text itself. Include a few deliberately awkward words - loyal, proud, selfish - that could plausibly sit in more than one ring, because those are the ones that produce the argument.

How do you make it harder or easier?

Start with six supplied words and only two rings, always and never. Add the sometimes ring and a required piece of evidence once they are comfortable. To stretch them, run two characters side by side, or the same character at the start and end of the book.

Where the class is	What to change
First time out	Six words, supplied. Two rings only to start - always and never - then introduce sometimes once they are comfortable.
Once they are comfortable	All three rings, and a required piece of evidence for anything placed in the middle.
To stretch them	Two characters side by side on the printed sheet, then compare. Or the same character twice, at the start and end of the book, and discuss which words moved.