Develop pupils’ understanding of characters in your classroom using our Conscience Alley worksheets. You can also easily adapt this into a drama activity.
Pupils will record information about a dilemma a character is facing. They’ll note thoughts, concerns and ideas the character may have about the dilemma. They’ll also jot down any thoughts that they, as the reader, have.
After recording the information, students can make a decision about what the character might do next using the ideas they’ve noted down.
This drama-based activity can help deepen pupils’ understanding of characters and help them infer thoughts and feelings about dilemmas or events that characters may face
What is Conscience Alley?
Conscience Alley is a great way of exploring dilemmas faced by the protagonist of a story.
When used in drama, a class creates two lines facing each other to form an ‘alley’. Choose one child to be the protagonist/character and walk down the ‘alley’, with children in the lines telling them their thoughts, concerns and ideas about the dilemma the character is facing.
Once the child, in role of the character, has reached the end of the line, they make a decision about how to act next, explaining their reasoning.
The worksheet in this resource pack recreates this activity, with pupils noting their ideas about the dilemma the character faces.
What is in this whole-school resource?
- Conscience Alley worksheet 1
- Conscience Alley worksheet 2
- Teacher notes with guidance on how to use the resources in the classroom
How can I use these resources?
You can use the resources to explore characters in books that you are reading as a class or to develop a character in drama or before writing.
It gives pupils the opportunity to infer characters’ thoughts feelings and actions, developing pupils’ inference skills.
Conscience Alley is one of the many strategies used in Plazoom’s Real Comprehension, a whole-school resource to develop reading skills and promote reading for pleasure.