writing a character study ks2

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Story Writing: Characters

Learning focus.

Learn how characters are created and write a character description.

This lesson includes:

one video about creating characters

one video of ex-England player Eniola Aluko reading an extract from Matilda by Roald Dahl

three activities

When authors create a new character they have to know everything about them. This means answering a lot questions about what that character is like.

Watch this short clip to see how this is done.

Authors need to know everything about their characters so they know how they will act throughout the story.

They ask themselves questions like:

• What's the character's name?
• How does the character behave?
• What do they like to do?
• How old are they?
• What do they feel and what are they thinking?

Play the following clip to hear ex-England player Eniola Aluko read an extract from Matilda by Roald Dahl.

Listen carefully to the conversation between Matilda and Miss Trunchbull and think about what each character is like.

You may need paper and a pen or pencil for some of these activities.

Copy and complete the table below. You need to think of four more adjectives (describing words) for each of the characters

Top tip: Thinking about what the characters say and do will help.

Choose five of your points and explain how you know that by referring to what happened in the story. Use the word ‘because’.

For example: I know that Matilda is brave because she stands up to Miss Trunchbull when she shouts at her.

Imagine you are writing a story set in a school, like in Matilda.

You’re going to create a character who would be in that story. It could be anyone – the head teacher, a teacher, a student, a coach, a caretaker.

Jot down some notes under the following headings to build a profile for your character.

My character’s name

My character’s personality

My character’s job

How my character behaves

How my character speaks

How my character reacts to others

My character’s strength / weakness

How others would describe my character

If you like, you could also draw your character in the centre of a sheet of paper and add labels to describe their appearance.

Read this character description of a school caretaker called Mr Simmons.

He is a kind and happy person who likes to help others. This is shown through his actions.

Mr Simmons is the caretaker at Dillon Road Primary School. He is a small man, with white-grey hair and bright brown eyes. He wears round spectacles and the same blue overalls every day. He has been at Dillon Road for as long as anybody can remember.

Mr Simmons can often be found with his old yellow bucket and mop cleaning the corridors. When the children run in from play time, leaving shoe marks and muddy footprints behind them, Mr Simmons will tut, roll his eyes and clean up the mess. Although he’s always hard at work, if he ever sees anyone who looks sad or upset, he’ll pull funny faces to make them smile.

At the end of the day, he cleans the classrooms and leaves happy messages on the whiteboards for the children and teachers to find in the morning. If ever he finds a missing jumper, a lost toy or some hidden sweets (which are strictly forbidden) he always finds out who they belong to (and won’t tell you off!).

Write your own character description using the character profile your filled out in Activity 2.

You should write between five and ten sentences.

Try to include:

What your character looks like.

What their job or role is.

What their personality is like.

Their actions – what they do in the school.

Where next?

In this lesson you have explored how characters are created and written a character description.

There are other useful articles on Bitesize to help you improve your creative writing.

What is a setting?

How is a story structured?

There's more to learn

More English Guides

Take a look at our other English guides.

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Character description – 12 of the best worksheets and resources for KS1 and KS2 English

Create characters with depth, desires and three dimensions with these excellent activities, ideas, lesson plans and more…

There are many parts of the National Curriculum that might require a quick Google refresher each time it comes to teaching it (which ones are causal conjunctions again?), but thankfully, describing people is something that comes to us fairly naturally in childhood.

But, there is of course more to great character descriptions than simply being able to describe what a person looks like.

That’s where these resources will come in handy.

1 | Creating characters with Sam Copeland podcast and resources

Help KS2 children to create vibrant, believable, complex characters with expert advice from Sam Copeland, author of the ‘Charlie McGuffin’ series of books, in which the eponymous hero changes into random animals when he gets stressed.

This resources pack is designed to be used with episode two of the Author In Your Classroom podcast , a virtual ‘author visit’ you can share with children whenever you like, absolutely free!

The pack then includes accompanying resources and includes a PowerPoint, teacher notes, book extracts in print and as audiobook clips, illustrations and author quotes for a working wall display, story planning sheets and story writing sheets.

Find the resources here.

2 | Creating characters KS2 challenge mat

This set of worksheets allows KS2 children to think about how to create strong, convincing characters. Each task – understand, explain, challenge, test, apply – explores how ‘showing’, not telling, what a character is like can add impact to their writing.

Perfect for home learning, as an exercise before an independent writing task, and as a way to challenge more able learners in lower year groups, the worksheets are bright and engaging, using eye-catching images to fire children’s imaginations, and giving them the opportunity to apply their knowledge in creative writing activities.

You can find them here.

3 | Describing Goldilocks KS1 lesson plan

Is the story of Goldilocks as clear cut as you might think? Did she go in, uninvited, to the three bears’ house and cause criminal damage? Or maybe she was lost and needed the shelter or had another pressing reason to go in?

In this lesson, children will explore the character of Goldilocks and come to their own conclusions about what she was really like, using the book Me and You by Anthony Browne, which describes itself as ‘a thought-provoking take on the Goldilocks story.’

They’ll learn how to read between the lines by inference and deduction on words and pictures, and they’ll build a profile of a well-known character through interpreting and discussing evidence.

Download it here.

4 | Describing spooky characters LKS2 writing resources pack

Inspire pupils year 3 and 4 to write engaging character descriptions using our spooky character description resource pack.

Read the model text ‘The Wizard’ and explore how the author has described a character, including information about what they look like, where they live and their character traits.

As well as the text, this resource pack includes a creating characters ideas sheet, vocabulary cards, spooky character cards, object cards, a planning sheet, themed writing paper and teacher’s notes.

Find all this here.

5 | Create a character from the feet up

We’ve all heard the expression that you don’t know someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, well here’s an exercise from First Story that’s designed to get to the soul of a character, by starting at the sole.

First, ask each student to take off a shoe and draw around their foot. Then, starting at the toe, ask them to create a fictional character in their mind and to imagine that character’s feet. What are the feet like? Big, small, calloused? Long toenails? What sort of shoes do they wear?

Next move up to imagine the character’s ankles. Are they strong? Weak? What about their knees? Do they have scars on their knees? Why?

Carry on up the body with this activity here.

6 | Four activities for developing characters

From annoying words and mannerisms to finding out what’s in someone’s bag, these innovative drama and story writing ideas from Leanne Welsh are great for delving deep into characters’ backstories…

Check them out here.

7 | Descriptosaurus character description games

This Descriptosaurus resource from National Literacy Trust was produced for a writing challenge and has all sorts of descriptive writing activities.

The one which we’re interested in here are the two character description games, which are supported by character cards (which you’ll find in the appendix of the resource).

These cards are arranged in levels from one to six, with the characters traits and vocabulary becoming progressively harder with each level.

Download everything you need here.

8 | Judy Moody character creation challenge

Another National Literacy Trust resource, this one is based on the Judy Moody series by Megan McDonald.

In the first book of the series, we get to know Judy through a homework task set in her new class – a ‘Me’ collage. As part of the collage, Judy has to think about some of the best, worst and funniest things that have ever happened to her.

These resources challenge your pupils to develop this idea and pen a 500-word short story about a character they have invented, recounting either the best thing, the worst thing or the funniest thing that has ever happened to their character.

Get this pack here.

9 | Top Trumps character creations

Creating characters using the popular Top Trumps format is a useful way to encourage pupils to think beyond the appearance of their characters and whether they’re adventurous, brave, cowardly or cruel, for example, and to consider their feelings, thoughts and motivations.

Using and punctuating direct speech is a significant objective for pupils in lower KS2. So, by including space to plan what characters say, the Top Trumps character profile encourages pupils to include direct speech in their narratives and so create characters with physical presence beyond their appearance.

Once you’ve completed a planning profile with pupils, you can then model using it to write effective character descriptions, showing how to include aspects of character through descriptions of actions, thoughts and dialogue.

Find this resource from Rachel Clarke, here.

10 | Character description posters for A Christmas Carol

Always a popular choice for a class read, especially this time of year, these posters contain descriptive words and terms for various characters in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol .

Download them all here.

11 | Create characters with The BFG

Does someone’s appearance always match their personality? Use these Roald Dahl activity cards and lesson plan for KS1 or KS2 to discuss this with your class, and learn how to create interesting characters in your own story writing.

Grab it here.

12 | Wild West story writing pack

This massive download pack contains materials designed to assist KS2 students with writing stories set within the period of the Wild West.

It includes short example texts, image prompts, ideas relating to town settings, outdoor settings, characters and objects/animals, a poster book and a PowerPoint presentation containing 21 slides of assorted Wild West-themed photography.

Ride off into the sunset with this resource here.

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Resources you can trust

Character analysis - finding out about characters in different ways

Find out about a character using evidence from the text. Are they happy because they smile a lot or shy because they can never look anyone in the eye?

A KS2 planning sheet is included to help children use their research to plan own character.

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Describing Characters, Jamal’s Aunty/The Stranger - KS2 Text Types: Writing Planners and Model Texts

Resource Collection WAGOLL: text types writing packs

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This pack contains resources to support pupils in key stage 2 to plan and write a character description. Describing characters is included in one of the writing composition objectives in years 3 / 4 and 5/ 6. The resources are based on two model texts with planning sheets to support pupils to write their own character descriptions with images of interesting characters provided to inspire creative writing.

Whilst using this resource, you may also want to share a variety of other character descriptions from novels that you are currently or have previously read with the pupils.

What is included in this resource pack?

• Character description model text: Jamal’s Aunty - This model text is a character description of a family member of a character from a story and could be used with pupils in years 3 and 4. The model text can be used to learn the features of this text type. Pupils could also list what they know about the character described from the text.
• Character description model text: The Stranger - This model text is a character description of a stranger who has suddenly appeared. it includes examples of dialogue, used to convey character and so is perfect for use with pupils in years 5 and 6. The model text can be used to learn the features of this text type. Pupils could also list what they know about the character described from the text.
• Character description writing sheet - There are two versions included for LKS2 and UKS2. Both contain a success criteria list as well as examples of grammar skills suitable for LKS2 (expanded noun phrases and determiners) and UKS2 (using dialogue to convey character and the use of relative clauses) from the English curriculum.
• Character image cards - Pupils can use the images of interesting characters to write their own character descriptions and inspire creative writing.
• Character description planning sheet - These worksheets allow pupils to note and organise ideas for their own character description. This could be based on one of the character images, creating a new character for a story that you are currently reading or pupils could design their own characters.
• Writing paper - The themed writing paper can be used for pupils to present their work.

National Curriculum English programme of study links

Year 3 / 4 Pupils should be taught to plan their writing by discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar Pupils should be taught to draft and write by in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot

Year 5 / 6 Pupils should be taught to plan their writing by

• identifying the audience for and purpose of the writing, selecting the appropriate form and using other similar writing as models for their own
• noting and developing initial ideas, drawing on reading and research where necessary

Pupils should be taught to draft and write by:

• in narratives, describing settings, characters and atmosphere ...

This resource is part of the WAGOLL: text types writing packs collection. View more from this collection

• Character description model text: Jamal’s Aunty
• Character description model text: The Stranger
• Character description writing sheet
• Character image cards
• Character description planning shee
• Writing paper

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Writing a Character Description PPT

Subject: English

Age range: 5-7

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

11 February 2021

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A lesson ppt on writing a charcter description at first level (CFE) KS1

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Character Description Writing Frames (SB4012)

Printable writing frames for writing character descriptions/profiles.

Character Description Sheets (SB7978)

Simple character description sheets with 3 boxes for children to complete: appearance, personality and would you be this character’s friend?

Fairytale Character Description Writing Frames (SB4017)

Printable writing frames for writing descriptions/profiles of various fairytale characters.

Jack and the Beanstalk Character Description Writing Frames (SB4011)

Printable writing frames for writing descriptions/profiles of characters from the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

Goldilocks Character Description Writing Frames (SB4015)

Printable writing frames for writing descriptions/profiles of characters from the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Three Billy Goats Gruff Character Description Writing Frames (SB4016)

Printable writing frames for writing descriptions/profiles of characters from the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Snow White Character Description Writing Frames (SB4019)

Printable writing frames for writing descriptions/profiles of characters from the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Wizard of Oz Character Description Writing Frames (SB4018)

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