St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner, and I wanted to share a book and activity I did several years ago for Book Talk Thursday.  I used the book The Leprechaun's Gold by Pamela Duncan Edwards to guide the students through the process. The story is about Old Pat and Young Tom, who are both harpists.   Tom learned to play the harp from Old Pat but thinks that he is a better harpist and should always charge money.  The king decides to hold a contest to see who the best harpist in the land is, so they both decide to travel together to play in the king's contest.  Tom realizes that he will lose to Pat, so he destroys Pat's harp, making it unable to play beautifully.  Along the way, they hear a leprechaun who needs help, so Pat chooses to help the leprechaun.  The sincere hospitality of Pat helps the leprechauns show their gratitude.

In the story, Young Tom changes his attitude, so I used this Character Change Chart to help them understand that characters can change in a story.   You can use this with any book that has a character that changes throughout the story.  Just click here or on the picture below to grab it. I love how my students think about the characters during a story.  They now understand that they don't always stay the same, and many times the solution is born out of their changes.

Don't forget to link up again this week!
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