3 Fun Wizard of Oz Character Traits Activities with word clouds & adjectives

The Wizard of Oz is the perfect read aloud during our weather unit. The blend of fiction and the science of weather is *chef’s kiss*! There is SO much to do with this book, but today we are focusing identifying The Wizard of Oz character traits.

I love learning about The Wizard of Oz character traits, but this year, we added a little bit more technology into this project!

identifying wizard of oz character traits

We are reading a revised version of The Wizard of Oz and each of the first few chapters introduces one of the main characters.  After each character’s chapter, we worked in our table groups to “pass the pen” and brainstorm traits of that character. (We were working on the Cowardly Lion in this picture.)

Using Text Evidence to Support Character Traits

Then, I collected all 6 tables’ character trait webs and we shared each one aloud.  As I read a character trait from each group’s web, we talked about whether or not we had read evidence from the text to support that trait… And with our “bubble test” (standardized testing) coming up soon, I was so pleased with how well they were able to defend and support their character traits….or politely argue against someone else’s trait!

Creating Character Trait Word Clouds

As each character trait was agreed on, I typed it into a word cloud.  My kiddos were already familiar with word clouds because we use them to brainstorm adjectives to describe our ranch hands/student of the week each week.  But they love them so much, that any excuse to tie in a word cloud is good with my firsties! #easytoplease

I use abcya for my word clouds.  One reason that I love this one (there are a ton of word cloud sites out there) is because it’s super kid-friendly.  Like my first graders can make their own word clouds with very little guidance (but a lot of modeling) when we get to use our laptop set!  This time, I had our word cloud screen on our Smart Board so they were definitely more engaged in defending and politely arguing against character traits because they were dying to have their group’s word added to our word cloud! 🙂

Then, we clicked to turn our words into a word cloud!  With a few adjustments on font and layout and color, we landed on some pretty perfect word clouds!  Here are a few of our favorites….

After Spring Break, we will be using our knowledge about the character traits and using text evidence to decide which character said what!  And this character trait activity was the perfect building block for next week’s activity!  You can find the character trait webs and more in Wizard of Oz companion packet!