Assess your new learners' writing abilities and knowledge of literary terms with these diagnostic activities. Part of a back-to-school unit, this is meant to provide the teacher with information about the ability levels of their class....

Relate the structure of the essay to the structure of a building. The class compares an essay to a building, with the writer being the architect, the introduction being the foundation, and so on. They use the visual representation of a...

High school readers examine George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" for examples of symbolism, metaphor, connotation, and irony. They analyze how these literary tools convey the writer's main point and contribute to the persuasive...

Read like a writer. Scholars read a model literary analysis in preparation for a similar writing assignment before annotating each paragraph for the gist. Next, pupils devise a list of qualities of a strong literary analysis essay. 

Remember reading "The Lottery" and "The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson? Learners can experience and analyze the tension, themes, and human experience found in these pieces through reading and class discussion. They use...

One activity, two essays, and one central theme: qualities of an argument essay. Here, scholars first describe the qualities of an argument essay regarding Bud's rules to live by from the novel Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis....

Pupils prepare to write argumentative essays based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. They begin weighing evidence and crafting claims for their writing about control.

After reading The Minister's Black Veil, by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a homework assignment your class will complete a literary analysis.  Learners will analyze important element of the story and take notes to help support their...

See what peers really think. Scholars give a peer critique of the their essay drafts from the previous lesson. They then participate in a mini lesson about pronouns. Pupils write examples of each type of pronoun on sticky notes and put...

Jump back into expository writing and analysis at the start of a new school year! Start with a review of an authors' stylistic choices in diction, syntax, treatment of subject matter, and figurative language. Writers choose a text to...

Clichés, paradoxes, and equivocations are detailed in a short, animated video that defines and illustrates these writing traps. The resource also includes a quiz and the transcript for the video. Users can register to access free course...

Readers of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings are asked to craft an essay in which they compare how Maya Angelou uses figurative language to depict herself and Mrs. Flowers. 

To conclude the study of the play, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, class members craft an in-class essay comparing Doescher's adaptation to George Lucas's film, Star Wars: A New Hope.

Begin your unit on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea with an anticipation guide. As kids read 12 statements that relate to the novel's themes, they decide whether each is true or false in their own opinion.

Why is literary analysis so important? Readers explore writing a literary analysis by reviewing literary elements such as character, metaphor, plot, setting, simile, personification, and style. They read "Young Goodman Brown" by...

Revenge, mortality, madness—what are the central ideas from Shakespeare's Hamlet? Scholars answer the question by writing multi-paragraph responses. They also identify and discuss literary devices from the play.

"Eneke the bird says since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching." As part of their study of Things Fall Apart, class members read Paul Hernadi and Francis Steen's essay, "The Tropical Landscapes...

A thorough unit on literary analysis and character development culminates in a final writing assessment. Prompted to compare the parent-child relationships in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, high...

After reading Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, class members craft an essay in which they use evidence from a variety of vignettes to demonstrate how Cisneros develops Esperanza's character.

As a mid-unit assessment, class members demonstrate their understanding of the concepts covered so far by crafting a formal, multi-paragraph essay in which they analyze how Rainer Maria Rilke's word choices develop the meaning and tone...

After brainstorming, middle schoolers write an expository essay for a writing project. They focus on supporting points, organization, and writing conventions to develop a well-integrated paper. In addition, they revise, proofread and...

Students analyze American essayists Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass in an introduction to American literary non-fiction writing. In this essay history lesson, students identify methods for writing essays. Students read and analyze...

Does that happen in real life? Scholars look at their Themes of Adversity graphic organizers and think of examples in today's world for each type of adversity. They determine if today's world has the same struggles as those in the...

Students read the book THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London and discuss the different elements in the book. They then write an essay on a theme providing examples backing up their main point of their essay.