This chart does some interesting work.

First it names a teaching point: Readers understand how to describe character actions under certain circumstances. It gives a simple reminder of what we mean by circumstances (situation, moment, or event). This strategy is important for children reading books with complex characters. They are not one-dimensional, but embody different traits at different times. When we pay attention to how characters’ behavior changes under different circumstances, we can then start to think about why, which would be the follow-up to this lesson. On this chart, the words that come after ‘because’ show this next step in the thought process.

Then it gives an example of how this might sound: When no one is around, Maria is acting sneaky because she wants to play with her mother’s ring. Maria is not always sneaky. We wouldn’t say she’s a sneaky character, but she is sneaky under these circumstances. Why? Ahhhh, there’s the question! Because she wants to play with her mother’s ring. If we hold on to this information, it will help us understand how Maria has changed at the end of the book.

Finally, and this is the part that really got me thinking, it provides a template for students to do this same kind of work in their own books: When _______, the character is acting ___________, because _________. It’s all well and good if children can do this work in the highly supported settings of read aloud or a whole-class lesson. When they go off to read their own books they need to be able to do the same kind of thinking. A template like this can give readers the extra support they need until this kind of thinking becomes a habit. Traditional cloze activities ask children to fill in blanks based on literal recall: “Maria wanted to play with _____.” This kind of cloze activity has lots of possible answers. It makes children think, not just remember.