literary report card

We have just finished reading Among The Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. One activity I did was to have the students produce a "report card" for Jen, a pivotal character in the book. I picked the subjects (which are closely related to character traits) and the children gave her the grade. They also had to produce some text based evidence as to why they gave the grade they did. The students debated what the appropriate grade would be - I wrote what I could see would be the average . Later I asked the children: what characteristics does a good leader need? Having courage, patience, common sense and being a good listener came up. We decided Jen had some of the qualities a good leader needs, but she was lacking others.
After finishing the book I announced that it was the first book in a series. Book two went flying off the shelf! The fifth graders have become big Haddix fans. Scholastic bookclubs (Oct. and Nov.) has her other series on sale: Sent, Found and Sabotaged. Quite a few of the kids ordered them. Christine