Kensuke's Kingdom - Characterisation of Kensuke!

This engaging and informative lesson enables students to make precise interpretations regarding the characterisation of Kensuke in Michael Morpurgo’s ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom.’ In particular, children comprehend how Kensuke’s character is initially introduced in Chapter 5 of the text, before tracking how his character develops throughout the story.

The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:

Developing a contextual understanding of Japan, including the events of World War II, and how Japan has changed more recently;
Reading an extract from the text in which Kensuke is introduced, identifying his key characteristics and answering comprehension questions about his character;
Tracking the development of Kensuke throughout the story;
Creating their own character for the island, drawing on Morpurgo’s characterisation techniques;
Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts.
Included is:

Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive;
Character Development Tracking Graph;
Character Profile Template;
Comprehensive Lesson Plan

All resources are provided in Word (for easy editing) and PDF (to ensure formatting remains fixed between different computers).
There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with year 4 and 5 classes, however colleagues have used them for between years 3 and 8 with some adaptations. The word documents are within the zip file.

All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.