Writing Literary Analyses guides your students step by step through the process of analyzing a work of middle school literature. Students can focus their analyses on any story element: plot, character, setting, conflict, or theme, or a combination of these. Instructions, activities, examples, interactives, and downloads help students learn new skills for analyzing literature. You can also present this unit right from your interactive whiteboard.
First students warm up by exploring literary conflict. Then they read a sample literary analysis about the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. After responding to the sample analysis, students work step by step through the process of writing their own literary analyses:
- Prewriting activities help students select a work of literature, focus on an important story element, and gather key details about it.
- Writing activities help students write a beginning that grabs the reader's interest, gives the title and the author, and provides the thesis for the analysis. Other activities help students develop middle paragraphs with main points that support the thesis, using quotations and other evidence from the literature. Ending activities help students thoughtfully wrap up their analyses.
- Revising activities help students add thematic details and improve the organization of their writing. Students also get a peer review and use a checklist to improve their analyses.
- Editing activities help students use commas with equal adjectives and introductory elements and learn to punctuate quoted evidence from the literature. An editing checklist lists common errors for students to correct.
- Publishing activities help students create a clean final copy of their analyses and reflect on what they have learned.