The BFG: Character Description

Immerse your children into the wonderful world of Roald Dahl with these fantastic BFG character description lesson plans. Your Year 3 children will get to know the characters in greater depth by looking deeper into their qualities and will begin to understand how authors such as Roald Dahl uses descriptive language to paint a picture of characters in the reader's mind.

After recapping the use of adjectives, children will consider how different audiences feel about a character, checking their understanding of character vs characteristics. They will then move on to identify how Roald Dahl uses similes to describe characters. With lessons including how to use adjectives in a list and how to expand sentences using conjunctions, children will have the tools to write a character description with the opportunity to create their own BFG character in the alternative activity.

This sequence of five English lesson plans is ready to teach, complete with detailed planning, engaging slideshows for teaching input, and a range of resources including differentiated worksheets and challenges. All designed to save teachers time!

If you are teaching the BFG make sure you have a look at our FREE BFG Brain Teasers.

Please be aware that, for copyright purposes, we are unable to provide the full text for this scheme of work. Extracts are provided where appropriate.

Identifying Adjectives

Discover how the power of adjectives can create an image in the reader's mind in this lesson. With extracts from The BFG, children will be able to dive into the story and identify adjectives that best describe the character, giving them the opportunity to listen and share ideas in a group.

In this lesson, your Year 3 children will learn how to use adjectives to describe the BFG, Sophie and the Bloodbottler with visual character cards and adjective cards.

View Lesson 1

Character and Characteristics

In this lesson, children will learn the difference between character and characteristics. They will consider how synonyms can help develop their use of descriptive vocabulary and understand how different audiences may feel towards a character. Children will be encouraged to think about their own feelings towards The BFG characters and why they feel this way.

This lesson comes with planning, slides for teaching input and a range of great resources to support children in their learning.

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Similes

In this lesson, children will focus on how to describe a character using similes. Children will practise identifying similes in extracts from The BFG and consider how Roald Dahl uses similes to describe not only a character's appearance, but also their personality and actions.

With a range of simile examples taken straight from the text, children will begin to understand how Roald Dahl develops characters which will support them in thinking of their own similes. This lesson comes with fun ways to teach similes including simile puzzles and active simile games.

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Character Profiles

After getting to know the characters in The BFG, children will develop BFG character profiles to support them in their writing. Drawing on their understanding of descriptive language, including adjectives, synonyms and similes, children will use their BFG character profile templates to record their ideas.

Complete with planning slides for teaching input and a range of differentiated resources, this lesson is ready to teach.

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Writing Character Descriptions

In this final BFG character description KS2 lesson, children will first look at two example character descriptions and will be asked to assess which is better and why. They will then be guided through how to take their ideas from their character profiles and expand words and phrases into full sentences. Children will use their character checklists to remind them of what should be included in their descriptions and will improve their writing through the editing challenge.

Complete with a character description template to support children's writing, character checklists and tools to edit their writing, this lesson will challenge children to apply what they have learnt and allows them to bring characters to life.

View Lesson 5