teaching literary analysis essay

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Teaching Literary Analysis

Guide students through the five steps of understanding and writing literary analysis: choosing and focusing a topic, gathering, presenting and analyzing textual evidence, and concluding.

Literary analysis is a vital stage in the development of students' critical thinking skills. Bloom's Taxonomy illustrates that analysis should come at the fourth level, right after comprehension and application. What this means is that students must be able to understand and describe the text before they are able to analyze its elements.

Teaching literary analysis is often a daunting and overwhelming task. After all, it is essentially guiding students slowly through the process of critical thinking and understanding literature. That’s not a simple undertaking. Most importantly, with so many ways to go about doing it, where to begin?

To guide students toward discovering literature all on their own, the steps of this process need to be introduced in a simplified form. It's very important for the student to understand that literary analysis is indeed a process where there is no right or wrong answer. This empowers students to be passionate about their topics and, most importantly, encourages them to look beyond the words on the page.

1. Choose a Topic

Some students need guidance when choosing a topic, but others have ideas that they would like to explore. Topics can be divided into the main literary elements:

Literary devices

2. Focus the Topic

Here is where many students will need to do a lot of brainstorming, outlining, and specific thinking about the element on which they would like to focus.

The brainstorming process involves mapping out the different aspects of the chosen element.
Make a choice by narrowing down the selection and focusing the ideas.
Come up with a question to answer (thesis statement): What do you want to explore about the topic? Why does it stand out to you?
Answer the "why" question. Instead of letting students simply describe the text, "why" pushes them to analyze and even synthesize. This aspect is vital to student understanding, as most of the time a teacher is able to identify a relevant thesis related to modern-day issues and concepts. Here is where real-world application, analysis, and synthesis can begin to form in this piece of writing.

3. Gather Textual Evidence

Collecting material to answer or support your question is often a time-consuming stage, because most of the close reading will occur here. It's important for students to know that they're allowed to research the topic or text before starting to write. Many students feel that they should not be using Google or Wikipedia to research their texts. Here is where the teacher can have an honest discussion about digital citizenship, and how to tell credible academic sources from non-credible ones.

Show students that close reading and gathering evidence doesn't have to be a mundane, one-dimensional task.

Identify common themes, repetitions, and patterns.
Categorize elements, tone, and narrative style.
Highlight characterization, setting, and foreshadowing.
Label character types, symbols, and metaphors.

4. Introduce, Evidence, Analyze

Learning through writing and literary analysis happens through stages (see Bloom's Taxonomy ). At this stage of writing, students have already accomplished remembering, understanding, and applying. Next comes analysis.

Students should introduce their point in one or two clear topic sentences. Next, it's important to provide evidence that supports the main topic in order to convince the reader of the stated point of view. There are a few ways students can add their evidence.

Quotation: When providing evidence word for word from a primary or secondary source, students should be reminded to use quotation marks only if the words have not been altered.
Summary: Students summarize a piece of evidence by restating it in a shorter form using their own words.
Paraphrase: Students explain a piece of evidence using their own words.

At this stage, it's important to use the lesson as a reminder to cite and give credit for words and ideas that belong to others. A conversation with the class about academic honesty is very important to help them understand intellectual property. This conversation will also prepare them for honesty and ethics in the real or academic world.

This critical stage is often a learning curve for many students. It's important that the teacher helps them distinguish between descriptive writing and analytical writing. Descriptive writing answers the "who," "what," "where," and "how" questions. It often tends to summarize the text. Analytical writing , however, answers to the "why" question. When students consider the question, "Why is this point important?", it pushes them beyond mere description into ideas that are convincing, argumentative, and defend a position.

5. Conclusion

A strong conclusion outlines the main ideas of the essay, but it also works to provide a solution to a real-life problem. Students can focus on concluding with what they hope to get out of their analysis, or provide closure to the topic. Most importantly, students should seize the conclusion as an opportunity to provide their own opinion and reflection about their process of analyzing the text. The self-reflection here would be a vital key for teachers to assess the writing process and a great opportunity to provide essential feedback to the student.

Please share your own experiences in teaching students about literary analysis.

Teaching Literary Analysis: 17 Essential Questions To Guide Your Students.

Use these 17 essential questions to guide your students through literary analysis regardless of what they’re reading. The best part? You can recycle and reuse these questions, again and again, all year long.

The key to teaching literary analysis lies in having the right tools to move beyond a solid foundation of comprehension. In other words, it’s time to help your students grab their literary excavator and dig a little deeper.

Teaching Literary Analysis to Secondary Students

Yes, it’s important to ask students for details aboutwhat they read. However, in the secondary classroom, it’s time to prepare them to analyze what they read. Yet, whether they’re afraid of being “wrong” or simply don’t know where to begin, literary analysis tends to intimidate students.

It doesn’t matter if we’re assigning students one of our favorite novels or a must-read from the literary canon; there’s nothing worse than when students’ analysis falls flat. (Bor-ing.) Instead, we want them to be able to understand how to read between the lines. To break down the text into smaller pieces and examine how each works on its own and as part of the bigger picture– I mean, story.

We don’t just want them to think about what they’re reading but think deeply about it. We want them to take part in lively conversations and well-supported critical responses. We want them to question, analyze, and understand the author’s choices and their implications.

In other words, we don’t just want them to read the text. We want them to engage with the text.

But how exactly do we help them get there?

The First Step: Asking The Essential Questions

Literary analysis is like any other skill– it takes practice. Even the brightest of students need to learn the how-tos behind analyzing a text before mastering the art. And if you’re looking to avoid reading countless literary analysis flops– we all know how painful those can be– you know you want to teach it well . So, before asking students to showcase their knowledge in assessment form (aka the feared and fretted literary analysis essay), we must teach them how to read and analyze a text. Luckily, with the right approach, teaching literary analysis does not have to be so dreadful. (And neither do those papers.)

It all begins by asking the right questions to guide students through their literary analysis. These questions will help students dig deeper into a piece of literature as they think, discuss, and even write about the text at hand. In fact, you might just be surprised how much deeper your students can analyze a piece of literature with these 17 essential questions.

17 Essential Questions To Guide Your Students Through Literary Analysis

Whether you’re asking your students to analyze a novel, play, short story, or poem, these 17 essential questions can be a big help.

These questions serve as a springboard for students to dig deeper into the author’s choices regarding elements such as theme, character, plot, conflict, and setting. They’ll help them move beyond comprehending and summarizing a piece of literature and toward analyzing and evaluating it.

Essential Questions About Theme

There are many ways authors reveal and develop a text’s theme. Students can better identify, understand, and analyze the theme(s) with the right questions as a guide.

What is the main subject of this text? (Psst… I always remind students that this should apply to the world beyond the text itself.)
What is the author’s commentary/main message regarding said subject?
Are there any instances of symbolism , repetition, juxtaposition, or irony that develop or enhance this message?

Essential Questions About Character

Once the students identify the characters, understanding them is an essential element of literary analysis. Use the following questions to help students move beyond the basics of identifying characters and, instead, seeing them as essential elements to a story.

What does the character say and think?
How does the character act?
How does the character interact with other characters in the story?
What are the characters’ motivations and values and how are they revealed throughout the story?
How do the characters in the story develop or enhance the theme?

Essential Questions About Plot and Conflict

There’s much more to plot than simply identifying what is happening in the story. It can also serve as a way to develop the story. Therefore, students can use the following questions to analyze plot effectively.

Is the plot revealed in chronological order, or does it begin in medias res, meaning in the middle? Why did the author choose to tell the story this way?
What is the story’s main conflict?
How is the conflict revealed, developed, and resolved?
How does the conflict of the story develop or enhance the theme?

Essential Questions About Setting

Once students identify the time and place of a piece of literature– the setting– they can begin to analyze the broader role the setting serves in the text. Let’s just say it wasn’t a coincidence that Fitzgerald chose New York City and its suburbs for The Great Gatsby or that Miller set The Crucible in Salem 1692. The following questions can help students dive deeper into the story’s setting.

Does the setting change? If so, what impact does that have on the characters?
How does the setting affect the story’s plot?
How does the setting affect the story’s conflict?
How does the setting of the story develop or enhance the theme?

A Question To Get Students To See The Bigger Picture

Before saying “that’s a wrap” on literary analysis, we can’t forget to encourage students to understand that text in a broader context. In fact, this “bigger picture” thinking is what allows literary classics to remain relevant today!

Therefore, push students to see the bigger picture and analyze the author’s intentions by asking them the following question.

How might this text serve as a mirror or window (or both) to the reader and/or modern society? (Similarly, you can also ask them to consider the significance of the piece during the time it was written.)

A Final Word On Teaching Literary Analysis

First step? Learning how to analyze a text. Next up? Writing an accompanying essay. Luckily, answers to any of the questions above (with supportive textual evidence, of course) will provide students with the foundation they need to tackle the analytical essay.

The best part about these questions? They can be used over and over again so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Simply apply them to various texts throughout the year, and voila! You have a go-to resource for teaching literary analysis.

You can tweak the questions here and there to fit each text better or simply leave them as is! Either way, your students will walk away from the school year with a solid understanding of literary analysis. (Goal accomplished.)

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Secrets of Teaching the Literary Analysis Essay

Textual Analysis Basic Skills and No-Prep Lessons for English Class

January 28, 2019 // by Lindsay Ann // 3 Comments

Sharing is caring!

I teach standard-level sophomores. They’re eager-to-please, and when asked to write a literary analysis essay, they know the basics. “Oh, this is just another I.C.E. paragraph, right??” They’ve learned the five paragraph literary analysis essay “formula,” and they know that they’re supposed to introduce, cite, and explain evidence. What they don’t know, though, is how to deepen their explanations using close reading of a text. In other words, they don’t know what they don’t know.

In the beginning of the year, I start with the basics of writing a literary analysis essay. We practice reading strategies for complex texts, annotation skills, and looking for the “deeper meaning” by analyzing diction, specifically connotation vs. denotation.

Yes, I know that students are supposed to know this…they learned it in middle school. However, when text complexity increases and they’ve just returned from a summer of playing endless video games and pool volleyball, they need just a little refresher before writing their next literary analysis essay. Aaaaand maybe a literary analysis essay example or two.

How to Write Literary Analysis Essay

Over the years, I’ve tried different approaches to the teaching of close reading skills needed for writing a literary analysis essay. I’ve found the most success with the following progression: first images, then quotations, then full-blown literary analysis.

I start with images first because they’re engaging and accessible as we work with categories for connotative thinking, brainstorming things, emotions, and abstract ideas for important details. Then, we go pattern hunting and turn those patterns into claims. Finally, we practice proving claims through written analysis. And it all starts with an advertisement or an image as the text for literary analysis writing.

Analyzing Quotations

As students become used to this pattern for literary analysis and have found success with visual texts, we move to the next level of complexity: an excerpt from a text or thought-provoking quotation.

What’s the author’s claim or assertion? How can we prove this claim by closely examining the quotation itself, not only the diction but also the syntax? What does an effective literary analysis essay paragraph look like?

This analytical task is challenging for students, but rewarding when they’re able to defend an interpretation of a bite-sized text.

All the while, students are practicing important literary analysis essay skills and using I.C.E., but man oh man does the explanation part of their paragraph stretch (see image to the right) and start to reflect higher-level thinking and analysis! You can even have students self-reflect and code their own paragraphs as a part of the writing process!

Full Texts Next

By this time, students have gone through several cycles of modeling, seen literary analysis example texts, practiced textual analysis skills and paragraph writing with the opportunity for focused feedback from me. Teacher bonus: it’s waaaay easier to provide feedback for one paragraph than an entire literary analysis essay!

We continue with pattern-hunting and analysis of diction and syntax, but zoom out to also think about the author’s purpose in a text as a whole. Poems, nonfiction articles, short stories, plays, and full-length novels become our main source of brain food for the rest of the year.

I love this approach because in just a few short weeks I see students mature in their thinking and writing . I push them toward writing a college-level literary analysis and away from formula paragraphs.

Literary Analysis Essay Examples for YOU

Maybe you can resonate? Are your students like mine and you’re not sure where to begin (or maybe just don’t have the time to pull together a literary analysis mini-unit on the fly?

I’d love for you to check out one of my new resources, Literary Analysis Essay Introduction . And you’re welcome to try out this free sample , as well.

For the FULL close reading and literary analysis bundle, click here. Paired-text analysis lessons, connotation vs. denotation skill-building, images-to-quotation analysis practice with mentor texts, and Google Form assessments. Um, yes please !

About Lindsay Ann

Lindsay has been teaching high school English in the burbs of Chicago for 19 years. She is passionate about helping English teachers find balance in their lives and teaching practice through practical feedback strategies and student-led learning strategies. She also geeks out about literary analysis, inquiry-based learning, and classroom technology integration. When Lindsay is not teaching, she enjoys playing with her two kids, running, and getting lost in a good book.

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ELA Common Core Lesson Plans

Create Characters Lesson Plan
Creative Writing Lesson Plan: Using Details
How to Write a Cause and Effect Essay
How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay Lesson Plan
How to Write a Persuasive Essay
How to Write a Reflective Essay
How to Write an Article Critique and Review
How to Write an Introduction to an Essay
How to Write a Problem Solution Essay
Lesson Plan: Effective Sentence Structure
Lesson Plan: Improve Writing Style with Improved Sentence Structure
Logical Fallacies Lesson Plan with Summary & Examples
Teaching Active and Passive Voice
Teaching How to Revise a Rough Draft
Teaching Instructional Articles: How to Write Instructions
Teaching Word Choice: Using Strong Verbs
Using Imagery Lesson Plan
Writing for Audience and Purpose
Writing Transitions Lesson
Analyzing Humor in Literature Lesson Plan
Analyzing Shakespeare Strategies
Fun Reading Lesson Plan

How to Write a Literary Analysis.

How to Annotate and Analyze a Poem
Lesson Plan for Teaching Annotation
Literary Terms Lesson Plan
Literature Exemplars – Grades-9-10
Teaching Short Story Elements
Using Short Stories to Teach Elements of Literature
Bill of Rights Lesson Plan
Fun Ideas for Teaching Language
Comma Rules: How to Use Commas
Difference between Denotation and Connotation
Effective Word Choice Lesson Plan
Fun Grammar Review Game or Vocabulary & Language Arts
Lesson Plans for Substitute Teachers and Busy English Teachers
Lesson Plan: Creating the Perfect Title
4.08 – Lesson Plan: Using Semicolons Correctly
Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Lesson Plan
Sentence Combining Made Easy Lesson Plan
Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary
Using Tone Effectively Lesson Plan
4.12 – Word Choice Lesson Plan: Eliminate and Replace “To Be” Verbs
Using Voice in Writing Effectively Lesson Plan
Speaking & Listening
Teacher Guide Central

Lesson Plan: How to Write a Literary Analysis

Remember when you assigned a literary analysis or an interpretive essay and all you got was 237 summaries of a short story you'd already read 15 times, so you slammed your hand in the filing cabinet drawer until you drew blood and broke every finger?

The better option, of course, would have been to teach students how to write an interpretive essay or to teach students how to write a literary analysis.

Would you like a rubric? Of course, you would: Literary Analysis Generic Rubric .

The Basics of Writing a Literary Analysis

Use the following guidelines for teaching how to write an interpretive essay or how to write a literary analysis:

The introduction must introduce the literary work, capture the reader's attention , and include a clearly written thesis statement that contains the literary interpretation.
The body of the essay must support the thesis statement through evidence--facts, examples, summaries--and commentary--opinions, analysis, interpretation, insight.
The conclusion summarizes the interpretation and allows the writer to draw attention to the most important aspects of the analysis.

An 'A' essay does the following:

Identifies the author, title, and gives a brief summary of the literary work.
Provides a clear interpretation of the author's message and purpose.
Provides details, quotations

Writing and Drafting

Reread the literary work several times. This seems logical to teachers. It's not logical for students. Read through the first time to get a feel for the work. Reread and look for passages and ideas that stand out or have special meaning.
Before drafting, brainstorm possible interpretations. A good strategy is to write annotations as you read.
Discuss the interpretation with others who have read the work. As a teacher, it's important to have class discussions on works being analyzed.
Make sure you have a clear answer to the following questions as you write or revise:
What is the main point of the essay? This main point should be clearly identified in the thesis statement.
What evidence best supports the interpretation ?
Are there any points that should be added to clarify the interpretation?
Is there any superfluous evidence that could be deleted?

Common Pitfalls

Writing a Summary : No matter how many times you emphasize that you do not want a summary, you'll still get them. The only way to eliminate this error is to model analysis and give really low grades to students who summarize rather than analyze.

Listing Facts : A close relative of the summary is listing facts. It's also called the, "I'll list as many facts as I can about this literary work and hope the teacher doesn't grade it very closely" syndrome. Explain that listing facts without explaining how the fact supports the thesis statement or why that fact is important is useless.

Having No Evidence : At the other end of the bad analysis spectrum is the no evidence analysis. It consists of nothing but conjecture.

Mini Lesson

Teach how to write a literary analysis or how to write an interpretive essay and avoid the common pitfalls before you assign the essay. Try this exercise.

Write down a specific quotation or example from a literary work.
Underneath the quote write the phrase this shows________ .
Complete the sentence two times for each quotation.
Discuss answers and point out the difference between analysis and summary.
Once students have the basic idea down, assign the essay.
Another option is to have them answer discussion questions in the following format: 1 detail from the story, with 2 pieces of analysis.

Common Core Standards

Teaching how to write a literary analysis satisfies the following ELA Common Core Standards.

RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
L.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
RL.9-10.3 Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
W.9-10.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
W.9-10.1a Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
W.9-10.1b Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience's knowledge level and concerns.
W.9-10.2b Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience's knowledge of the topic. W.9-10.2a Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings); graphics (e.g., figures, tables); and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
W.9-10.1c Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims.
W.9-10.2f Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented (e.g., articulating implications or the significance of the topic).
W.9-10.3c Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole.
W.9-10.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
L.9-10.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

Types of Essays

Step-by-step instructions for writing different types of essays can be accessed by the following links.

Problem-Solution Essay
Persuasive Essay
Narrative Essay
Instructional Article
Literary Analysis
How to Write a Tall-Tale
How to Write an Article Critique
Cause and Effect Essay

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12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

How often do you hear your students ask how to write a literary analysis paper? When you get to writing in your curriculum, do you get excited? Maybe you have heart palpitations? Perhaps you love the idea of teaching writing or you feel lost in the lesson ideas. Whatever you are feeling related to essay writing, know that teaching writing is a tricky business and while some teachers thrive, many teachers go back to the drawing board again and again to find the perfect lessons. If you are looking for some tips and tricks to improve your current lessons or prefer a new step-by-step process, check out how I teach writing literary analysis in my classroom.

Before we get started, can I ask? Do you struggle with teaching literary analysis to your students? Do you feel like you are missing key information to help improve your students’ writing? Are your essays just not where you want them to be? Have you repeated the same information over and over again just to have students miss major parts of their essay? If you can relate to any of these questions, then friend I have just the thing for you! Check out my FREE Literary Analysis Essay Writing Teacher Toolkit ! In this FREE resource, I give you everything you need to transform your students’ writing without having to rewrite all your literary analysis essay lesson plans. If you want to learn more, check it out HERE .

Teacher typing on a laptop planning how to write a literary analysis essay

The Struggle with Literary Analysis

What i was doing with my literary analysis lessons that was not working.

When I first started teaching essay writing and specifically literary analysis essay writing, I would become so frustrated! My students were just not getting it! We would create a thesis statement together and even that would go sideways because students would always forget what I wanted in the thesis. Once you tackled that obstacle, my students would write their paragraphs at their own pace with prompts from me. They were always forgetting all the elements in the body paragraph and their introductions and conclusions did not make sense and were each three sentences long. Even worst, their analysis was more summary than anything else. I felt like I was talking to a wall. Why were my students not listening to me? Were they intentionally ignoring all my great instructions? After semesters of subpar writing and so much reinstruction, I realized that something had to change. That’s when I started rewriting my lessons to help my students better understand literary analysis writing.

Why Literary Analysis Writing is So Important

Literary analysis writing is one of the hardest concepts that I teach my students. They want to summarize the text instead of finding those deeper meanings or connecting life lessons to the reader. But every time I would get frustrated with this writing unit, I pushed through to keep working on it. Why did I put so much effort into this unit? The reason: literary analysis writing is so important! Besides being on the main standards for high school English classrooms, this type of writing helps set up your students up for the entire writing career. The ability to analyze any text is critical. Even if your students aren’t all going on to become great English teachers like you, they will learn how to make inference, analyze the deeper meanings, and make connections to the real world. Plus, I love challenging my students thinking and challenging them to work through something new that they have not done before. As you can see, we can’t just abandon literary analysis writing. So if you want to me see how I teach my students to write literary analysis essay, check out my steps below.

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay

Step #1: start with how to write a thesis statement example.

The critical first step is having students write their thesis statement. Since this one sentence becomes the foundation for the entire essay, I have my students start here. For our first literary analysis essay, we focus on finding a theme from our novel to analyze. Since students have been working on themes the entire time we have been reading the novel, writing our thesis statement does not take long. I created a guide that shows how to write a thesis statement example so my students have sentence starters and a formula to create their thesis. We also discuss the difference between an explicit thesis statement (where students list their thesis reasons) vs. implicit thesis statement (students only share their opinion from the prompt). Each thesis statement includes the TAG (title, author, and genre), the answer to the prompt and their personal opinion. My guide also provides examples from other essays that they can use as guides to help their own writing.

I have students submit their thesis statements to me using a Google Form so that I can provide and approve feedback for each student. I allow students to fix this thesis statement as many times as necessary because I believe that students should have a solid thesis statement if I want them to write a strong literary analysis essay. If you want to use the guide that I created for my students, CLICK HERE .

Step #1: Start with How to Write a Literary Analysis Thesis Image with Thesis Statement Example handouts

Step #2: Hold a Writing Literary Analysis Mini Lesson Workshop

Once my students have tackled their thesis statements, we are almost ready to start the real writing. However, before we jump into the analysis writing, I take some time to remind my students how do literary analysis with their examples. Up until this point, my students have written constructed responses using literary analysis but they have not written an essay that shares ides and analysis over multiple paragraphs. The best way to prepare them for their own paragraphs is to hold a writing literary analysis mini lesson.

I create a set of handouts that show students that walk students through the steps of the analysis process. First, we discuss what I call the Three Levels of Analysis and where to find them in an essay:

Level #1 Analysis: Answers that can be found directly in the text and appear in the introduction and transition sentences in an essay
Level #2 Analysis: Students have to make inferences about what the text is teaching related to their thesis and appear in topics sentences, commentary, and clincher sentences within the essay.
Level #3 Analysis: The writer makes a conenction to the real world and answer the question “Why should the reader care?”. Students can find this analysis in their commentary and in their conclusion.

Once we have learned about the three levels of analysis, we look at the story of Cinderella and answer different levels of analysis questions to help students understand how they would write these types of analysis in their own writing. Then, I have students identify these three levels in an example paragraph. Furthermore, we work together to dissect another paragraph to separate all the pieces of a body paragraph so students better understand the elements they need to include. We will even write a practice paragraph together if I feel that it is necessary This guide is what I use for my writing literary analysis mini lesson.

Step #2: Hold a Writing Literary Analysis Mini Lesson Workshop image with notebook in background

Step #3: Jump in with a Writing a Body Paragraph Lesson

Now that my students can confidently identify literary analysis, they are ready to start writing their essay. I never have students start with the introduction. I explain to my students that their introduction will explain what the essay will discuss and that is much easier to do once you have written the essay. We write our body paragraph in two major steps. First, I provide my students with a body paragraph outline that gives detailed instructions and prompts for each sentence in the body paragraph.

After students answer the outline questions, the students copy and paste their answers into a Word document and properly format it for MLA. Students then submit this typed paragraph for a grade. I dedicate at least one day for each body paragraph so students have enough time to write each one but not too much time for students to waste their writing days. I prefer to have my students turn in each body paragraph as they write them. I do this for two reasons: first I want to provide students feedback on their writing so they can make adjustments as they write and secondly, I do not want them to procrastinate and wait until the night before to complete their essay. I want to force students to learn how to chunk their writing and work on accomplishing their tasks in a timely manner. Click here to see my body paragraph guide.

Body Paragraph Outline to help teach writing body paragraph

Step #4: Teach How to Write an Introduction to an Essay

After students finish their body paragraphs, we move on to how to write an introduction to an essay. I start the class period by teaching students how an introduction should be formatted. I use the graphic of an upside down triange that is labeled with each part of the introduction. I use this image because I want students to understand that we start very general in our introduction and then gradually become more specific until they reach the tip of the triangle with their thesis statement. Check out my introduction mini lesson HERE .

With the introduction mini-lesson finished, I provide students with an outline that prompts them for each sentence of the introduction. Once they have completed this outline, students should copy and paste their answers into their Word document and submit the paragraph for a grade.

Computer showing how to write an introduction to an essay

Step #5: Teach How to Write a Conclusion in an Essay

The final piece of the literary analysis essay is the conclusion. Before the students begin writing this paragraph, I start the class with a conclusion writing mini-lesson. Just like the introduction, I give my students a graphic to show them the proper format of a conclusion. This time instead of an upside-down one, the students look at a right-side-up triangle. I explain to the students that they are now starting with the most specific part of the conclusion at the start: their restated thesis statement. Students should then move into more general life lessons and finally leave the reader with a final thought to end the essay. If you want to see my how to write a conclusion in an essay guide, click HERE .

With a step-by-step guide, students are now ready to write their conclusion. Students should build their paragraphs in the outline and transfer their answers on a Word doc for submission. At the end of the class period, before students submit their conclusion, I show students how to create a Works Cited. I highly recommend showing students the citations tool on Google Docs which will help students do the work with just a little information.

Step #5: Teach how to write a conclusion in an essay with computer in background

Step #6: Hold Writing Conferences & Editing Days

Finally, the last step of the process is to give students a chance to edit their work and meet with students to provide feedback. This step in the process can happen throughout the writing days or you wait until after the essay is completed to edit.

My preference is to have students work on edits after writing the first body paragraph. Part of the reason I find submitting the essay in chunks is that I can provide immediate feedback to students. After the first paragraph is submitted, I immediately grade that paragraph. This is the only paragraph where I will provide detailed feedback on why the student received the grade that they did. Once all the first body paragraphs are graded (normally the next day), I allow students to resubmit that paragraph for a better grade.

Furthermore, I offer each student the opportunity to meet with me for 10 minutes and receive help and feedback on any of the paragraphs that they have written so far. I create a Google form where students can sign up for a specific day to meet with me. Once again, I prefer to do writing conferences throughout the writing but you can also schedule one or two edit days for your students and meet with them during that time. An added benefit of grading that first paragraph quickly is that you are guaranteed to have corrections ready to discuss with students. I always offer students to resubmit the paragraph we discuss for a new grade even if I have already graded it.

You have some flexibility for this final step but I definitely encourage you to now skip this step because it is perhaps the most beneficial for your students.

English teacher and student sitting at a table having a writing conference

Short on Time: How to Write Literary Analysis Paper In Less Time

Solution #1: combine writing days.

One of the ways to help save you time is to cut down on the writing days you give your students. After students learn how to write a body paragraph, you can shorten the number of days that give students to write each one. Perhaps even combine the body paragraphs together and have more due at the same time.

You can also combine the introduction and conclusion writing days as well. Since the setup and format of the introduction and conclusion pair together already, you can save some time to help save your writing time.

Solution #2: Cut Out Parts of the Essay

If you know that your students will have other writing opportunities in your course, you could cut down parts of the essay to help ease your schedule. If your focus for this essay is to truly just focus on the literary analysis then you have a few options. Instead of writing the entire essay, have students only write their three body paragraphs. This way you are still providing feedback on the most important part of the essay.

If you want students to focus on the entire setup of an essay but don’t have a ton of time, you can have students write an introduction, one body paragraph, and the conclusion. Students still learn how to format an essay and you can provide feedback on all three parts of the essay without having to focus on all of the body paragraphs.

More Ideas for How to Write Literary Analysis Paper

In Order For Students To Become Better Writers You Must Teach Critical Thinking

How to Encourage Students to Master the AP Lit Thesis

Using Google Forms to Write a Literary Analysis Essay

When you are ready to have your students write a literary analysis essay, try out my essay writing method. I would love to know how it goes for you! I love hearing how you will put your own special twist on these lessons. I know I can learn something from you too!

If you want a little help getting started with this new literary analysis essay, I have just the thing for you. Check out my Literary Analysis Essay Writing Bundle . In this bundle, you will have everything you need to teach the literary analysis essay just like I do with my students. I include guides, examples, and step by step outlines. I can wait to see the ways you teach your students how to write literary analysis paper!

literary analysis essay writing bundle handouts

Download Your FREE Literary Analysis Essay Writing Teacher Toolkit Today!

Ready to take your literary analysis writer’s workshop to the next level?

Teaching how to write a literary analysis essay can be tough. If you want to simplify the writing process for your students while making sure you don’t forget any steps, then this toolkit is made for you!

Click HERE to learn more!

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9 Different Methods and Strategies in Teaching English Literature [2024]

February 23, 2024
Lesson Planning

Introductory paragraph:

Imagine stepping into a classroom filled with eager students, ready to embark on a literary journey. As an English literature teacher, you have the power to ignite their passion for reading, analysis, and critical thinking. But how do you effectively teach English literature? In this article, we will explore nine different methods and strategies that will help you create an engaging and enriching learning experience for your students. From incorporating multimedia resources to fostering discussions and debates, we will provide you with practical tips and insights to make your English literature classes come alive.

Quick answer, quick tips and facts, background: the importance of teaching english literature, method 1: using a variety of texts, method 2: incorporating multimedia resources, method 3: encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, method 4: fostering discussions and debates, method 5: integrating writing assignments, method 6: providing opportunities for creative expression, method 7: utilizing technology tools, method 8: guiding literary analysis and essay writing, method 9: creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

What are the methods and strategies in teaching literature?

Teaching literature requires a combination of methods and strategies to engage students and enhance their understanding and appreciation of literary works. Some effective methods include using a variety of texts, incorporating multimedia resources, encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, fostering discussions and debates, integrating writing assignments, providing opportunities for creative expression, utilizing technology tools, guiding literary analysis and essay writing, and creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

Read more about “… What are the 5 Instructional Strategies in Teaching?”

What are the methods of teaching English and literature?

The methods of teaching English and literature encompass a range of strategies that promote reading comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills. These methods include using a variety of texts, incorporating multimedia resources, encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, fostering discussions and debates, integrating writing assignments, providing opportunities for creative expression, utilizing technology tools, guiding literary analysis and essay writing, and creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

Why are methods and techniques important in teaching literature?

Methods and techniques are important in teaching literature because they help engage students, deepen their understanding of texts, and develop their critical thinking and communication skills. By using a variety of methods and techniques, teachers can cater to different learning styles, create a dynamic learning environment, and foster a love for reading and learning.

What is the best teaching method for teaching English?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the best teaching method for teaching English. The most effective approach depends on various factors, including the students’ age, proficiency level, and learning styles. However, a combination of methods and strategies that incorporate a variety of texts, multimedia resources, critical analysis, discussions and debates, writing assignments, creative expression, technology tools, guided analysis, and a supportive classroom environment can create a well-rounded and engaging learning experience for students.

Read more about “10 Strategies for Writing in English: Tips from the Experts …”

Teaching English literature is a rewarding and impactful endeavor. By utilizing a combination of methods and strategies, you can create an engaging and enriching learning experience for your students. From using a variety of texts to incorporating multimedia resources, encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, fostering discussions and debates, integrating writing assignments, providing opportunities for creative expression, utilizing technology tools, guiding literary analysis and essay writing, and creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment, you have the power to ignite a lifelong love for literature in your students. So go forth, embrace these strategies, and watch your English literature classes come alive!

Instructional Coaching
Classroom Management
Differentiated Instruction
Early Childhood Education
Assessment Techniques
What are Some Examples of Instructional Strategies in the Classroom?
How To Teach Literature Skills in the Classroom | Indeed.com

Marti is a seasoned educator and strategist with a passion for fostering inclusive learning environments and empowering students through tailored educational experiences. With her roots as a university tutor—a position she landed during her undergraduate years—Marti has always been driven by the joy of facilitating others' learning journeys.

Holding a Bachelor's degree in Communication alongside a degree in Social Work, she has mastered the art of empathetic communication, enabling her to connect with students on a profound level. Marti’s unique educational background allows her to incorporate holistic approaches into her teaching, addressing not just the academic, but also the emotional and social needs of her students.

Throughout her career, Marti has developed and implemented innovative teaching strategies that cater to diverse learning styles, believing firmly that education should be accessible and engaging for all. Her work on the Teacher Strategies site encapsulates her extensive experience and dedication to education, offering readers insights into effective teaching methods, classroom management techniques, and strategies for fostering inclusive and supportive learning environments.

As an advocate for lifelong learning, Marti continuously seeks to expand her knowledge and skills, ensuring her teaching methods are both evidence-based and cutting edge. Whether through her blog articles on Teacher Strategies or her direct engagement with students, Marti remains committed to enhancing educational outcomes and inspiring the next generation of learners and educators alike.

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10 of the Best Literary Analysis Activities to Elevate Thinking

Inside this Post: Ready to elevate your literary analysis lessons? This post is full of engaging and effective activities to help students master literary analysis topics.

Literary analysis has become the beating heart of English classes around the world. When students read a text, we want them to peel back the layers one by one, appreciating the deeper meaning that lies within each sentence. As English teachers, many of us connect with texts easily and persevere through complex literature naturally. For our students, this process is not always as enjoyable.

In this post, you’ll find suggestions for elevating thinking with middle and high school students. These ideas can be used with paired or individual texts and can be differentiated to reach a variety of learners.

Engaging and Effective Literary Analysis Activities

Literary analysis elements are best when they are engaging and elevate thinking without frustrating students. I’ve played around with different approaches, and these are the key elements that resonate most with students.

Model literary analysis for middle and high school students with think alouds #MiddleSchoolELA #HighSchoolELA #LiteraryAnalysis

1. Thinking Aloud

One of the best feelings as a teacher is knowing you have an entire class full of teenagers engaged. It’s amazing how every single student in a classroom is in tune with think alouds. Something about making thinking transparent challenges students of all readiness levels. With literary analysis lessons, I love providing think alouds with the whole class. Whether we do this via face to face instruction or by creating a short video for virtual classrooms, we have to model our thinking.

Here’s an example with “All the world’s a stage” from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It …

This speech, at first, seems complicated. But, Shakespeare is talking about the world being a stage, and I think there is something deeper to what he is saying. Let’s go back again and look for clues. The men and women are players on the stage. He writes that they have their exits and entrances. I’m trying to visualize that in my head now. The world is a stage, the people are actors, and when they walk on and off the stage, that is their theatrical entrance and exit. Now that I understand he is using this speech as an extended metaphor, I wonder why would Shakespeare is choosing to compare these two things?

When modeling literary analysis, we can break down our thought process. If we write a written response, we can scaffold by color coding our thoughts in order to highlight the necessary critical thinking steps.

First, acknowledge what is confusing or uncertain about the text. What might we be missing as readers?
Second, make observations.
Third, apply reading strategies (in this case, I used visualizing).
Last, teach students to ask questions that probe at the deeper meaning and reason for the writing.

2. Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are one of my go-to strategies for elevating thinking . We can use them to differentiate and to guide students as we work in small groups. I like to keep a variety of literary analysis graphic organizers for any text on hand so that I can be responsive. If students show a need to work on analyzing a specific literary element – characterization, plot, theme, conflict, etcetera – I use a graphic organizer as we read a text or excerpt together, modeling my thinking. Then, students can practice using the same organizer in small groups, partners, or independently.

Literary analysis consists of asking a bunch of questions to lead students to deeper thinking, and graphic organizers are a bridge that walks students down that path of purposeful questioning.

Grab this print and digital literary analysis graphic organizer for analyzing song lyrics – one of secondary students’ favorite texts to pick apart!

Nothing grabs a student’s attention like an image! Visuals are amazing tools for introducing literary analysis skills. I always begin my literary analysis unit with pictures. Using an image, we can quickly show students how to differentiate between summarizing and analyzing . Then, we can walk them through the steps of acknowledging what we might be missing, making observations, applying reading strategies, and questioning for deeper meaning.

Consider using images from a variety of sources. We can try historical images, political cartoons, famous paintings, graphic novels, wordless picture books, advertisements, or even just regular photographs.

I even work this type of analytical thinking into my vocabulary activities ! Students get used to interpreting photos and using textual evidence to support their thinking.

Use one pagers as an engaging way to analyze literature #OnePagers #LiteraryAnalysis #MiddleSchoolELA

4. One Pagers

One pagers are one of my favorite literary analysis activities. In order to make them meaningful, I incorporate scaffolding . So, students have access to standards-aligned goals and questions that prompt their responses to the text. Choice helps as well. We can allow students to choose digital or traditional , response angles, and even texts.

In terms of literary analysis benefits, we can really focus on asking students to cite textual evidence to track a universal theme. While doing so, students can draw conclusions about how literary elements work together or how they provide tension to impact a reader’s overall takeaway.

5. Colorful Charts

Mood and tone can be tricky for students to analyze. So that they can understand the difference between them but also so that they see how mood and tone work in tandem, I began using an equalizer metaphor . Students can use color and amplification to analyze how mood and tone change throughout a literary work. By creating a visual representation, there’s a direct connection between the mood and the storyline.

How does setting impact mood , and how does mood impact the conflict in the story?

For instance, the quiet beauty of the Capulet garden sets the stage for a romantic balcony scene, but the noisy bustle of the lewd fighting in the Verona streets helps to define the conflict and tension between the two feuding families.

With tone , how does the author’s word choice and sentence structure in each section convey his or her attitude in the work?

As we study the amplification of tone in the play Romeo and Juliet , we see a consistent change from light-hearted comedy to an intensely poetic and tragic seriousness. Over the course of the play, one might say that Shakespeare’s juxtaposition creates an overall sympathetic tone toward the star-crossed lovers.

Movement in ELA; sticky note activity for literary analysis #LiteraryAnalysis #MovementinClassroom #SecondaryELA

6. Get Moving

One of the issues when it comes to citing evidence in a literary analysis essay is finding relevant support. Sometimes, it seems like the lines students select from literature are completely disconnected from what they are writing. That may be because they don’t truly understand how their thesis connects to their main points or how their main points connect to the evidence. For some students, there are too many degrees of separation!

A kinesthetic option to address this issue involves Post-Its (or colored text boxes if you are doing this digitally) and a t-chart. At the top of the paper (use big paper or a white board if you can do this together in the classroom!), write the analytical point. What conclusion can students draw about characters, setting, or another literary element that would support their thesis statement?

Under that, label the T-Chart as “Relevant” and “Off Topic.” Then, you have some options.

BASIC: You identify support for students in advance and have them sort the support based on its relevance. Could they use it to analyze the text, or is it off topic?

ADVANCE: Ask students to find examples of relevant and off-topic lines from the text.

A MIXTURE: Provide students with a handful of lines they can sort into relevant and off-topic categories, and then ask them to find a couple more examples on their own.

To increase the engagement factor, use some washi tape on the floor in the shape of whatever makes the most sense – a character outline for analyzing character, a house for analyzing setting, a circle for analyzing a universal theme. Then, have students stick their Post-It notes inside or outside of the shape. Inside indicates that the evidence is relevant, and outside means it’s off-topic.

7. Children’s Books

We don’t always think to use picture books with older students , but they are one of my absolute favorite ways to scaffold literary analysis! Because picture books are short, we can cover an entire (and often complex) story in a short period of time. And, we can continually refer back to that text throughout the school year. Because picture books are accessible for all students, they will remember sharing the story together, and you can really make significant strides with whole-class discussions and small group lessons.

Try using picture books to teach Notice and Note signposts, language, aesthetics, and theme . One of my favorite ways to use picture books is teaching students to analyze how dialogue impacts decisions, propels action, and develops characters. For example, in the book Elbow Grease , the protagonist is motivated to participate in a race for which he is the underdog simply because some crass comments from his friends make him angry. This really is the turning point in the story, which makes it convenient to analyze how dialogue can lead to decisions and actions that change the course of a storyline.

8. Short Films

For a thousand and one reasons, I adore short films. They’re short (obvious, I know), which makes them ideal for modeling and mini lessons. Plus, they are visually captivating and apply to a wide age range. And, generally, they hold quite a bit of depth and leave room for a variety of interpretations.

During first quarter with ninth graders, I built in a yearly routine of watching short films during our literary analysis unit and having students complete their first full analytical essay. It’s fun. I can model using a short film I enjoy. Then, I get to read a wide range of responses from students who choose different texts. To scaffold for struggling writers, I suggest a few short films I am very familiar with; this way, I can guide them if they get stuck or confused.

You can also build in short films by using them with poetry for paired text analysis .

Reading strategy activities for middle and high school ELA #ReadingStrategies #LiteraryAnalysis

9. Reading Strategies

One of the building blocks of literary analysis is having a good foundation in apply reading strategies. It’s fun to model what readers do. We can show students how analyzing texts and re-reading for deeper meaning helps us with writing and then ask students to practice those skills.

For instance, when students begin to understand that authors have a purposeful craft that impacts their reading experience, it empowers them to pick that craft apart, studying the nuances of what makes it work. And, it gives them an advantage as authors themselves. They may think, I remember how the author’s purposeful use of short, staccato sentences and onomatopoeias increased the suspense during that scene. Maybe I should use those techniques in this part of my story to add an emotional element for my readers.

These are some of the graphic organizers I’ve used to scaffold reading strategy work with the whole class, and then students can transfer those skills to small group or independent practice, using the same organizer if necessary.

10. Social Media Activities

Social media is everywhere. We might as well use it as a relevant option for analyzing literature! One of my favorites is booksnaps , and I tie in Snapchat by having them take a photo of part of the text they want to analyze. Then, they add interpretations, images, and text as well as a caption with a more detailed analysis. I call these Snap-a-Books. I also created a Spot-a-Book analysis option, reminiscent of Spotify playlists. Students can create playlists relevant to character analysis, setting analysis, conflict analysis, and more!

And, that’s ten! I hope you’ve found some meaningful literary analysis activities to spark creative, critical thinking in your classroom.

Engaging and effective literary analysis lessons and activities for middle and high school ELA #LiteraryAnalysis #MiddleSchoolELA #HighSchoolELA

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15 of the Best Questions for Teaching Literary Analysis

Teaching Literary Analysis: 15 Questions to Ask Your Students

Teaching literary analysis in the secondary English classroom is an essential cornerstone of high school English and middle school English curriculum. When students learn the process of literary analysis, they will embrace the new challenge each literary text brings. How do you teach literary analysis essay?

When I first teach literature to my students, I use direct instruction strategies. I provide my students with literary analysis terms and examples. Then we begin short stories and excerpts together. Usually, we will analyze a couple of short stories together as a class before moving on to more substantial pieces, like novels. One blog post that might be helpful is this one about how to write a literary analysis response .

When I’m teaching a piece of fiction, I like to have set questions I can use throughout the year to ask my students. As students answer the same question about various texts throughout the year, they improve their analytical skills and begin to form a better understanding of how literature analysis works.

If you are teaching response to analysis and literary analysis, here are ten questions you should ask your students about the piece they are reading. These questions are some of the questions included in my Response to Literature Task Cards that work with any piece of fiction. Here are several questions to guide your students as they analyze literature.

Here are 15 questions you can use when teaching literary analysis to your students.

Literary analysis questions about theme.

How do the characters in the story develop or enhance the theme?
How does the conflict of the story develop or enhance the theme?
How do the symbols within the story develop or enhance the theme?
How does the author’s tone of the story develop or enhance the theme?
How is the story’s theme reflect the context in which it was written?

Literary Analysis Questions About Setting

How does the setting affect the plot?
How does the setting affect the conflict?
How does the setting affect the tone of the story?

Literary Analysis Questions About Characters

What is one of the protagonist’s flaws or weaknesses?
What is one of the antagonist’s flaws or weaknesses?
What motivates the protagonist to act?
What motivates the antagonist to act?
What character is most believable and why?

Literary Analysis Questions About Conflict

How does the conflict reflect the context of the time in which the story was written?
How does the author create a believable conflict?

Here are some literary analysis teaching resources you may like:

Literary analysis with sticky notes.

Teaching literary analysis can be fun, engaging, and accessible for all students! Increase student engagement and understanding in your next literary analysis unit (whether it be short stories or novels) with interactive and hands-on close reading organizers and scaffolded writing responses. Students will enjoy using sticky notes in class as they analyze the author’s use of various literary devices in complex short stories and novels.

What fellow teachers say about this resource:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Extremely satisfied

“ My students found this very helpful to organize their writing and the movement involved with using sticky notes was a hit. The kids loved getting to use sticky notes and to flip them up and down. It made the planning for their writing so much faster. Would highly recommend for all students but especially for any kids who have a hard time focusing.”

“ This is a great way to have kids write literary analysis in a different way instead of just asking for essays. It’s like a little trick to get them to do academic work while thinking they are just doodling on sticky notes. I even use this with AP Lit and just modify my expectations somewhat. I appreciate all the different handouts/options.”

More resources:

My Literary Analysis Mini Flip Book combines the fun and excitement of sticky notes with the format of a mini flipbook. It is the perfect culminating activity for students to analyze a final short story in your short story teaching unit.

These Response to Literature Task Cards are an ideal way to get students talking about complex literary themes and ideas within any piece of fiction. There are two sets of tasks cards in this set, and you can use them again and again with any short story or novel.

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ELA G4:M1:U2:L9

Writing a Literary Essay: Analyzing a Model

In this lesson, daily learning targets, ongoing assessment.

Technology and Multimedia

Supporting English Language Learners

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ELA G4:M1:U2

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These are the CCS Standards addressed in this lesson:

RL.4.10: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
RI.4.10: By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
W.4.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
W.4.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
W.4.5: With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing.
I can use the Painted Essay structure to analyze a model. ( W.4.2, W.4.4, W.4.5 )
Painted Essay(r) template
Prepare the materials required for the Painted Essay (see Materials).
Preview the Painting an Essay lesson plan to familiarize yourself with what will be required of students (see supporting materials).
Post: Learning target and Working to Become Ethical People anchor chart.

Tech and Multimedia

Work Time A: Rather than using colored pencils on the displayed model literary essay, consider highlighting or using colored text on a word-processing document.

Supports guided in part by CA ELD Standards and 4.I.B.6 and 4.II.A.1

Important points in the lesson itself

The basic design of this lesson supports ELLs with opportunities to unpack an example of the work they are expected to complete during the remainder of the unit. They are also empowered to use a color-coding system that will help them understand essay structure using visual prompts.
ELLs may find it challenging to absorb an abundance of information and terminology about essay structure. Remind students that this structure is an expanded version of the paragraph structure they completed in prior lessons. Think aloud each part while analyzing the model essay in order to clarify the purpose of each component of the structure. Reassure students that even if they do not understand everything today, they will have plenty of opportunities to work with the concepts throughout the unit and the year.
In Work Time A, ELLs are invited to participate in an optional Language Dive. This conversation guides them through expanding the meaning of the focus statement in the model literary essay. It also provides students with further practice using the language structure from the model literary essay focus statement. Students may draw on this sentence when writing their informative essays later in the unit. A consistent Language Dive routine is critical in helping all students learn how to decipher compelling sentences and write their own. In addition, Language Dive conversations hasten overall English language development for ELLs. Preview the Language Dive Guide and consider how to invite conversation among students to address the questions and goals suggested under each sentence strip chunk (see supporting materials). Select from the questions and goals provided to best meet your students' needs. Consider providing students with a Language Dive log inside a folder to track Language Dive sentences and structures and collate Language Dive note-catchers.

Levels of support

For lighter support:

During the Language Dive, challenge students to generate questions about the sentence before asking the prepared questions. Example: "What questions can we ask about this sentence? Let's see if we can answer them together." (What does it mean to find inspiration?)

For heavier support:

Create a puzzle of the model literary essay using index cards. Paste each paragraph on a different index card. Use colored index cards according to the established Painted Essay colors. Challenge students to put the paragraph together in the correct order without looking at their papers.
Multiple Means of Representation (MMR): In Work Time A, students analyze a model essay in preparation to write their own essay. Help students engage with the model essay in multiple ways. Color-code the model on display with the same colors that the students use during the Painted Essay exercise.
Multiple Means of Action and Expression (MMAE): In the basic structure of this lesson, students get multiple representation cues with the color-coding provided by the Painted EssayO template. However, some students may find covering the entire essay in one lesson overwhelming. Consider chunking the explicit instruction for each part of the essay into multiple lessons to provide time for students to comprehend new information.
Multiple Means of Engagement (MME): This lesson continues work that students will use to write an informational essay on their expert group's poet. Build engagement for the informational essay by telling students that they get to become experts about a specific poet. Then they will be able to teach others all about the poet and demonstrate their knowledge.

Key: Lesson-Specific Vocabulary (L); Text-Specific Vocabulary (T); Vocabulary Used in Writing (W)

The Painted Essay, structure, analyze (L)
Model literary essay (one per student and one to display)
Informative Essay Prompt: What Inspires Poets? (from Lesson 6, one per student and one to display)
Vocabulary logs (from Unit 1, Lesson 3; one per student)
Annotated model literary essay (for teacher reference)
Painted Essay(r) template (one per student)
Paintbrushes (one per student)
Read, yellow, blue, and green watercolor paint (one set per pair)
Cups of water (one per pair)
Painting an Essay lesson plan (for teacher reference)
Red, yellow, blue, and green colored pencils (one set; for teacher modeling)
Paper (blank; one per student)
Informative Writing Checklist (one per student and one to display)
Language Dive Guide: Model Literary Essay (optional; for ELLs; for teacher reference)
Language Dive Note-catcher: Model Literary Essay (optional; for ELLs; one per student and one to display)
Language Dive Sentence strip chunks: Model Literary Essay (one to display)
Working to Become Ethical People anchor chart (begun in Unit 1, Lesson 2)
Independent Reading: Sample Plan ( see the Tools page ; for teacher reference)

Materials from Previous Lessons

New materials.

Each unit in the 3-5 Language Arts Curriculum has two standards-based assessments built in, one mid-unit assessment and one end of unit assessment. The module concludes with a performance task at the end of Unit 3 to synthesize their understanding of what they accomplished through supported, standards-based writing.

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Bell Ringers

Literature analysis using mentor texts, middle school realistic fiction unit for literature analysis using mentor texts.

Young adult fiction novels are perfect for teaching literature concepts, literature terms, and literature analysis.

When I developed this realistic fiction unit , I wanted to do so with mentor texts in mind. This unit focuses on literature analysis using mentor texts and includes studying literary concepts, interacting with the text, and collaborating with others. This 300+ page unit takes 4 weeks and includes mentor text examples for grades 6-8, so you can use it each year!

Connecting with Literature Through Book Clubs

Whether you call them literature circles or book clubs, this realistic fiction unit is perfect for introducing books that your students will read together in groups. First, I like to use the Starbooks Realistic Fiction Novel Selection/Book Club Selections as a pre-lesson to have your students select books.

Let your students test the books with a book tasting at “Starbooks”. You can open up your own “coffee shop” in your classroom to have your students try out books before they make final decisions on their top five books. Get all you need to open up your own Starbooks!

middle school book clubs starbooks book tasting set up

Literature Concepts

I genuinely love teaching realistic fiction because kids can relate to so many of the characters. However, sometimes it’s hard to fit in all the literature concepts in four weeks. That’s exactly why I created this unit the way I did. It makes sure that the focus is literature analysis using mentor texts, but it also breaks down each literary device.

I put together this realistic fiction unit with 18 lessons designed to cover multiple literature concepts and Common Core State Standards. The general idea is that Overall, here are all the lessons you’ll get with the realistic fiction unit:

Starbooks Realistic Fiction Novel Selection/Book Club Selections
Hard and Fast Figurative Language and Literature Terms
Point of View Impact
Setting Impact
Analyzing Character Traits
Direct and Indirect Characterization
Analyzing Theme
Literary Inferences
Point of View vs. Perspective
Literary Text Structures
Inspiration from the Past
Elements of Plot
Figurative Language Analysis
Theme Development
Central Idea and Objective Summary
Multimedia Versions Analysis
Narrative Point of View

Each of realistic fiction unit lessons not only includes interactive notebook activities for independent learning or literature circle groups but also include links to reinforcement activities. The 18 lessons (including two pre-lessons) are designed to be flexible. Since the lessons are modeled after mentor texts, you can use them as they are or use the open questions designed for any realistic fiction novel or short story.

using mentor texts to teach literature analysis

READING WORKSHOP

Each daily lesson follows a reading workshop schedule in the realistic fiction unit . In addition, each lesson has the following sections:

CCSS Learning Standards for 6th, 7th, and 8th
Learning Target for Lesson
Guiding Questions for Reading Responses
Interpretive Question for Book Club Discussions
Teacher Preparation (though all my examples can be used)
Literature Interactive Notebook Lesson and Examples/Answer Keys
Learning Period: Lesson, Read Aloud, and Modeling
Reading Response Break Down
Display Slides for Reading Response to show students an example for each lesson.
Different Reading Response Example for each grade with Unique Mentor Texts for each (6th- Ghost by Jason Reynolds; 7th- Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, and 8th- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton).
Graphic organizer reading response options for all lessons
Book Club Assignment

I start my class by having students complete a bell ringer for 5 minutes while I take attendance.

Next, students review and learn vocabulary terms necessary for the day’s lesson for 10 minutes.

During the next 20 minutes is the learning period. Read aloud from mentor texts to model good reading, metacognition, and also the targeted literature concept for the day.

Next, your students complete their reading response materials in interactive notebooks.

While the students work independently, you can grade their reading responses quickly from the day before.

Next, your students interact and discuss in their literature circle or book club books for 10 minutes or so.

Finally, spend the last few minutes wrapping up and sharing responses. Overall, your students experience reading workshops every day with these lessons.

LITERATURE TERMS AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE REFERENCE NOTEBOOK

With the common core literature standards, there are honestly so many terms and concepts to unpack. Give your students the resources they need in this realistic fiction unit with literature terms and figurative language reference notebook pages.

All of the concepts covered in the unit are broken down on these convenient reference sheets. Easily store them in a notebook to use during the unit or they can be used all year long. To snag this for free >> CLICK HERE <<.

GRAB YOUR FREE LITERARY DEVICES REFERENCE BOOKLET by clicking here

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Your realistic fiction unit for literature analysis using mentor texts will have everything you need to teach realistic fiction from start to finish. However, additional resources include:

Three Different Examples for All Reading Responses (6th- Ghost by Jason Reynolds; 7th- Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, and 8th- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton).
Reading Response Slides to Be Displayed While Students are Reading and Writing
Book Club Slides to Be Displayed During Book Club Meetings
Graphic Organizers for all Reading Responses
Literature Circle Forms, Implementation Resources, and Group Grading and Forms.
Editable Reading Response Rubrics
Using the middle school realistic fiction unit for literature analysis will help your students learn all the common core state standards and engage and interact with high quality literature and one another.

FREE LITERARY DEVICES REFERENCE BOOKLET

If you’re feeling overwhelmed when it comes to teaching ALL the literary devices in middle school ELA, then I’ve got you covered.

This FREE Literary Devices Booklet has 17 different reference pages for middle school students to use as they do simple response to reading work or as they navigate their way through complete literary analysis essays.

Each reference pages takes a different category of literary devices and breaks it down into manageable chunks and concepts for students in a way that fosters their independence.

These reference pages will support turning your students into analytical readers and writers in no time. To snag this for free >> CLICK HERE <<.

Read more about: Middle School Reading

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Get your free middle school ela pacing guides with completed scopes and sequences for the school year..

My ELA scope and sequence guides break down every single middle school ELA standard and concept for reading, writing, and language in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. Use the guides and resources exactly as is or as inspiration for you own!

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in High School · Junior High Language Arts · Language Arts · Literature · Middle School · Writing

Teaching the Essay from Analytical Grammar

After listening to the representative explain the Teaching the Essay unit, I knew that it was exactly what I was looking for to teach my daughter how to write a literary analysis essay. More than anything, the very best way to describe Teaching the Essay is CLEAR. Even if you have absolutely no background in expository writing, Teaching the Essay will teach you, the parent-teacher, how to teach your child to write a 5 paragraph expository essay focusing on literary analysis. Teaching the Essay is designed for the secondary student – junior high age and above.

As Robin Finley, the author of Teaching the Essay, asserts, writing a literary analysis essay involves fluency, mechanics, and structure . Fluency has to do with the “gift of gab” and the ability to put words on paper. Some children are natural writers and will find fluency easier than those who struggle to put words on paper but ALL children become more fluent writers with practice. Mechanics has to do with grammar and is taught separately from this unit by whatever grammar curriculum you choose. Lastly, writing a literary analysis essay involves STRUCTURE and Teaching the Essay focuses on the structure of a 5 paragraph essay. After finishing this teaching unit, your child should have no doubt about what a literary analysis actually is and how one should look.

Teaching the Essay comes with all of the notes and reproducible hand-outs you will need to teach a 4 – 8 week course on writing literary essays. My daughter is a fluent writer and was able to catch on to the concepts fairly easily so we completed the unit in 5 weeks. Depending on your child, you may need more or less time to finish the unit. In addition, a CD is included for the teacher. Listening to the whole CD gives you a big picture overview of the whole teaching unit so that you feel prepared about how to go about teaching the unit. As well, the CD is divided into tracks by teaching days so that you can listen to the specific teaching day that you are on to prepare for that day’s teaching.

How does this teaching unit work?

In this teaching unit, all students start with reading The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. Then, a thesis statement is given to the child to build a literary analysis essay around. For this first essay, the parent-teacher and student work together every step of the way to complete this first essay.
For the second essay, the child reads “Wheldon the Weed” first. Then the student is given a choice of three thesis statements to choose from that correspond to the included short story. This essay is completed more independently with the parent-teacher giving help as needed.
For the third essay, the child reads “Bargain” first. Then the student is given a choice of three thesis statements to choose from that correspond to the included short story. This essay is completed more independently with the parent-teacher giving help as needed.
Lastly, the student chooses his or her own short story and thesis statement. This last essay is written independently.

After writing four essays in this unit, the student should feel comfortable writing other literary essays. In my own experience, after writing the essays, my daughter was able to easily apply the knowledge and the structure to her writing assignments in her literary analysis course. If the student needs more or less practice, the teaching unit can be easily adjusted to the needs of the student.

In addition to all of the detailed instructions given on the CD, Teaching the Essay also includes the following tools to help teach the unit:

A very clearly written hand-out titled “What is a Literary Essay?”
A graphic organizer hand-out to further explain the structure of a literary essay titled “The Keyhole Structure of the Literary Essay”
A completed literary essay of the Tell-Tale Heart for the teacher
An outline hand-out of the whole writing process for a literary essay – “How to Write a Perfect Essay: It’s All in the Process!”
Teaching the Essay teaching notes – A Step by Step Guide for the Teacher
All the needed texts for the literary essays written in the unit (The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, Bargain by A. B. Guthrie,Jr., and Wheldon the Weed by Peter Jones)
Reproducible worksheets to help the student write each part of the essay
Very detailed grading rubric.

To learn more about Teaching the Essay, you can visit their website and watch an informational video about the teaching unit by Robin Finley. As well, I have found the representatives from Analytical Grammar very easy to talk to and quick to respond to e-mails. I am sure that they would be glad to answer any additional questions you may have about Teaching the Essay. Teaching the Essay is available online for $15.00.

Samantha has been homeschooling for 8 years and currently is homeschooling her 8th grade daughter, 6th grade son, and 4th grade son. Samantha is an eclectic homeschooler using a wide variety of curriculum to best meet the ever-changing needs of her children. Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy at Home .

Brenda is a homeschooling mother of 5, who has a wonderful husband encouraging her to be the best woman that God has created her to be. Together they are very intentional about spending time together as a family. She considers her daily life with her children as her ministry and has found many avenues to encourage others to live a lifestyle of learning. She is the founder of a curriculum review site authored by a group of well-known homeschool bloggers, The Curriculum Choice.

Reader Interactions

December 1, 2010 at 12:17 pm

This looks good, but I myself hate Poe, and I’ve always allowed my children to skip him. After reading their first Poe selection, they are more than happy to do so. So my question is, would it be possible to substitute some other author?

December 1, 2010 at 1:58 pm

Annie Kate,

Thank you for your comment and question! The curriculum actually includes several different selections:

Wheldon the Weed by Peter Jones Bargain by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

Thesis statements are given for all three selections. So, if you prefer not to read Poe, you could do the same exercises with the other two selections. The most guidance is given for the teacher and the student related directly to the Poe selection but you could simply listen to that material yourself to learn the process and apply it to another selection. The Poe selection works very well because the proofs for the thesis statement are very clear and easy to find, though.

After working through the Poe selection, I chose to substitute “The Lady or the Tiger” by Frank Stockton for the next essay. Really, any good short story would work well.

I did really enjoy this curriculum and found it quite helpful to teach my daughter the STRUCTURE of a literary analysis essay. Please feel free to ask any other questions and I’ll try to answer them. As well, I’ve found the authors at Analytical Grammar to be very helpful.

Samantha .-= Samantha´s last blog .. Evaluating Our 2010-2011 School Year Progress- Part 1 – Math =-.

May 14, 2011 at 3:05 am

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Open access
Published: 23 April 2024

Designing feedback processes in the workplace-based learning of undergraduate health professions education: a scoping review

Javiera Fuentes-Cimma 1 , 2 ,
Dominique Sluijsmans 3 ,
Arnoldo Riquelme 4 ,
Ignacio Villagran ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-8326 1 ,
Lorena Isbej ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4272-8484 2 , 5 ,
María Teresa Olivares-Labbe 6 &
Sylvia Heeneman 7

BMC Medical Education volume 24 , Article number: 440 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

172 Accesses

Metrics details

Feedback processes are crucial for learning, guiding improvement, and enhancing performance. In workplace-based learning settings, diverse teaching and assessment activities are advocated to be designed and implemented, generating feedback that students use, with proper guidance, to close the gap between current and desired performance levels. Since productive feedback processes rely on observed information regarding a student's performance, it is imperative to establish structured feedback activities within undergraduate workplace-based learning settings. However, these settings are characterized by their unpredictable nature, which can either promote learning or present challenges in offering structured learning opportunities for students. This scoping review maps literature on how feedback processes are organised in undergraduate clinical workplace-based learning settings, providing insight into the design and use of feedback.

A scoping review was conducted. Studies were identified from seven databases and ten relevant journals in medical education. The screening process was performed independently in duplicate with the support of the StArt program. Data were organized in a data chart and analyzed using thematic analysis. The feedback loop with a sociocultural perspective was used as a theoretical framework.

The search yielded 4,877 papers, and 61 were included in the review. Two themes were identified in the qualitative analysis: (1) The organization of the feedback processes in workplace-based learning settings, and (2) Sociocultural factors influencing the organization of feedback processes. The literature describes multiple teaching and assessment activities that generate feedback information. Most papers described experiences and perceptions of diverse teaching and assessment feedback activities. Few studies described how feedback processes improve performance. Sociocultural factors such as establishing a feedback culture, enabling stable and trustworthy relationships, and enhancing student feedback agency are crucial for productive feedback processes.

Conclusions

This review identified concrete ideas regarding how feedback could be organized within the clinical workplace to promote feedback processes. The feedback encounter should be organized to allow follow-up of the feedback, i.e., working on required learning and performance goals at the next occasion. The educational programs should design feedback processes by appropriately planning subsequent tasks and activities. More insight is needed in designing a full-loop feedback process, in which specific attention is needed in effective feedforward practices.

Peer Review reports

The design of effective feedback processes in higher education has been important for educators and researchers and has prompted numerous publications discussing potential mechanisms, theoretical frameworks, and best practice examples over the past few decades. Initially, research on feedback primarily focused more on teachers and feedback delivery, and students were depicted as passive feedback recipients [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. The feedback conversation has recently evolved to a more dynamic emphasis on interaction, sense-making, outcomes in actions, and engagement with learners [ 2 ]. This shift aligns with utilizing the feedback process as a form of social interaction or dialogue to enhance performance [ 4 ]. Henderson et al. (2019) defined feedback processes as "where the learner makes sense of performance-relevant information to promote their learning." (p. 17). When a student grasps the information concerning their performance in connection to the desired learning outcome and subsequently takes suitable action, a feedback loop is closed so the process can be regarded as successful [ 5 , 6 ].

Hattie and Timperley (2007) proposed a comprehensive perspective on feedback, the so-called feedback loop, to answer three key questions: “Where am I going? “How am I going?” and “Where to next?” [ 7 ]. Each question represents a key dimension of the feedback loop. The first is the feed-up, which consists of setting learning goals and sharing clear objectives of learners' performance expectations. While the concept of the feed-up might not be consistently included in the literature, it is considered to be related to principles of effective feedback and goal setting within educational contexts [ 7 , 8 ]. Goal setting allows students to focus on tasks and learning, and teachers to have clear intended learning outcomes to enable the design of aligned activities and tasks in which feedback processes can be embedded [ 9 ]. Teachers can improve the feed-up dimension by proposing clear, challenging, but achievable goals [ 7 ]. The second dimension of the feedback loop focuses on feedback and aims to answer the second question by obtaining information about students' current performance. Different teaching and assessment activities can be used to obtain feedback information, and it can be provided by a teacher or tutor, a peer, oneself, a patient, or another coworker. The last dimension of the feedback loop is the feedforward, which is specifically associated with using feedback to improve performance or change behaviors [ 10 ]. Feedforward is crucial in closing the loop because it refers to those specific actions students must take to reduce the gap between current and desired performance [ 7 ].

From a sociocultural perspective, feedback processes involve a social practice consisting of intricate relationships within a learning context [ 11 ]. The main feature of this approach is that students learn from feedback only when the feedback encounter includes generating, making sense of, and acting upon the information given [ 11 ]. In the context of workplace-based learning (WBL), actionable feedback plays a crucial role in enabling learners to leverage specific feedback to enhance their performance, skills, and conceptual understandings. The WBL environment provides students with a valuable opportunity to gain hands-on experience in authentic clinical settings, in which students work more independently on real-world tasks, allowing them to develop and exhibit their competencies [ 3 ]. However, WBL settings are characterized by their unpredictable nature, which can either promote self-directed learning or present challenges in offering structured learning opportunities for students [ 12 ]. Consequently, designing purposive feedback opportunities within WBL settings is a significant challenge for clinical teachers and faculty.

In undergraduate clinical education, feedback opportunities are often constrained due to the emphasis on clinical work and the absence of dedicated time for teaching [ 13 ]. Students are expected to perform autonomously under supervision, ideally achieved by giving them space to practice progressively and providing continuous instances of constructive feedback [ 14 ]. However, the hierarchy often present in clinical settings places undergraduate students in a dependent position, below residents and specialists [ 15 ]. Undergraduate or junior students may have different approaches to receiving and using feedback. If their priority is meeting the minimum standards given pass-fail consequences and acting merely as feedback recipients, other incentives may be needed to engage with the feedback processes because they will need more learning support [ 16 , 17 ]. Adequate supervision and feedback have been recognized as vital educational support in encouraging students to adopt a constructive learning approach [ 18 ]. Given that productive feedback processes rely on observed information regarding a student's performance, it is imperative to establish structured teaching and learning feedback activities within undergraduate WBL settings.

Despite the extensive research on feedback, a significant proportion of published studies involve residents or postgraduate students [ 19 , 20 ]. Recent reviews focusing on feedback interventions within medical education have clearly distinguished between undergraduate medical students and residents or fellows [ 21 ]. To gain a comprehensive understanding of initiatives related to actionable feedback in the WBL environment for undergraduate health professions, a scoping review of the existing literature could provide insight into how feedback processes are designed in that context. Accordingly, the present scoping review aims to answer the following research question: How are the feedback processes designed in the undergraduate health professions' workplace-based learning environments?

A scoping review was conducted using the five-step methodological framework proposed by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) [ 22 ], intertwined with the PRISMA checklist extension for scoping reviews to provide reporting guidance for this specific type of knowledge synthesis [ 23 ]. Scoping reviews allow us to study the literature without restricting the methodological quality of the studies found, systematically and comprehensively map the literature, and identify gaps [ 24 ]. Furthermore, a scoping review was used because this topic is not suitable for a systematic review due to the varied approaches described and the large difference in the methodologies used [ 21 ].

Search strategy

With the collaboration of a medical librarian, the authors used the research question to guide the search strategy. An initial meeting was held to define keywords and search resources. The proposed search strategy was reviewed by the research team, and then the study selection was conducted in two steps:

An online database search included Medline/PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, ERIC, and PsycINFO.

A directed search of ten relevant journals in the health sciences education field (Academic Medicine, Medical Education, Advances in Health Sciences Education, Medical Teacher, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, Journal of Surgical Education, BMC Medical Education, Medical Education Online, Perspectives on Medical Education and The Clinical Teacher) was performed.

The research team conducted a pilot or initial search before the full search to identify if the topic was susceptible to a scoping review. The full search was conducted in November 2022. One team member (MO) identified the papers in the databases. JF searched in the selected journals. Authors included studies written in English due to feasibility issues, with no time span limitation. After eliminating duplicates, two research team members (JF and IV) independently reviewed all the titles and abstracts using the exclusion and inclusion criteria described in Table 2 and with the support of the screening application StArT [ 25 ]. A third team member (AR) reviewed the titles and abstracts when the first two disagreed. The reviewer team met again at a midpoint and final stage to discuss the challenges related to study selection. Articles included for full-text review were exported to Mendeley. JF independently screened all full-text papers, and AR verified 10% for inclusion. The authors did not analyze study quality or risk of bias during study selection, which is consistent with conducting a scoping review.

The analysis of the results incorporated a descriptive summary and a thematic analysis, which was carried out to clarify and give consistency to the results' reporting [ 22 , 24 , 26 ]. Quantitative data were analyzed to report the characteristics of the studies, populations, settings, methods, and outcomes. Qualitative data were labeled, coded, and categorized into themes by three team members (JF, SH, and DS). The feedback loop framework with a sociocultural perspective was used as the theoretical framework to analyze the results.

The keywords used for the search strategies were as follows:

Clinical clerkship; feedback; formative feedback; health professions; undergraduate medical education; workplace.

Definitions of the keywords used for the present review are available in Appendix 1 .

As an example, we included the search strategy that we used in the Medline/PubMed database when conducting the full search:

("Formative Feedback"[Mesh] OR feedback) AND ("Workplace"[Mesh] OR workplace OR "Clinical Clerkship"[Mesh] OR clerkship) AND (("Education, Medical, Undergraduate"[Mesh] OR undergraduate health profession*) OR (learner* medical education)).

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The following inclusion and exclusion criteria were used (Table 1 ):

Data extraction

The research group developed a data-charting form to organize the information obtained from the studies. The process was iterative, as the data chart was continuously reviewed and improved as necessary. In addition, following Levac et al.'s recommendation (2010), the three members involved in the charting process (JF, LI, and IV) independently reviewed the first five selected studies to determine whether the data extraction was consistent with the objectives of this scoping review and to ensure consistency. Then, the team met using web-conferencing software (Zoom; CA, USA) to review the results and adjust any details in the chart. The same three members extracted data independently from all the selected studies, considering two members reviewing each paper [ 26 ]. A third team member was consulted if any conflict occurred when extracting data. The data chart identified demographic patterns and facilitated the data synthesis. To organize data, we used a shared Excel spreadsheet, considering the following headings: title, author(s), year of publication, journal/source, country/origin, aim of the study, research question (if any), population/sample size, participants, discipline, setting, methodology, study design, data collection, data analysis, intervention, outcomes, outcomes measure, key findings, and relation of findings to research question.

Additionally, all the included papers were uploaded to AtlasTi v19 to facilitate the qualitative analysis. Three team members (JF, SH, and DS) independently coded the first six papers to create a list of codes to ensure consistency and rigor. The group met several times to discuss and refine the list of codes. Then, one member of the team (JF) used the code list to code all the rest of the papers. Once all papers were coded, the team organized codes into descriptive themes aligned with the research question.

Preliminary results were shared with a number of stakeholders (six clinical teachers, ten students, six medical educators) to elicit their opinions as an opportunity to build on the evidence and offer a greater level of meaning, content expertise, and perspective to the preliminary findings [ 26 ]. No quality appraisal of the studies is considered for this scoping review, which aligns with the frameworks for guiding scoping reviews [ 27 ].

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

A database search resulted in 3,597 papers, and the directed search of the most relevant journals in the health sciences education field yielded 2,096 titles. An example of the results of one database is available in Appendix 2 . Of the titles obtained, 816 duplicates were eliminated, and the team reviewed the titles and abstracts of 4,877 papers. Of these, 120 were selected for full-text review. Finally, 61 papers were included in this scoping review (Fig. 1 ), as listed in Table 2 .

PRISMA flow diagram for included studies, incorporating records identified through the database and direct searching

The selected studies were published between 1986 and 2022, and seventy-five percent (46) were published during the last decade. Of all the articles included in this review, 13% (8) were literature reviews: one integrative review [ 28 ] and four scoping reviews [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Finally, fifty-three (87%) original or empirical papers were included (i.e., studies that answered a research question or achieved a research purpose through qualitative or quantitative methodologies) [ 15 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 ].

Table 2 summarizes the papers included in the present scoping review, and Table 3 describes the characteristics of the included studies.

The thematic analysis resulted in two themes: (1) the organization of feedback processes in WBL settings, and (2) sociocultural factors influencing the organization of feedback processes. Table 4 gives a summary of the themes and subthemes.

Organization of feedback processes in WBL settings.

Setting learning goals (i.e., feed-up dimension).

Feedback that focuses on students' learning needs and is based on known performance standards enhances student response and setting learning goals [ 30 ]. Discussing goals and agreements before starting clinical practice enhances students' feedback-seeking behavior [ 39 ] and responsiveness to feedback [ 83 ]. Farrell et al. (2017) found that teacher-learner co-constructed learning goals enhance feedback interactions and help establish educational alliances, improving the learning experience [ 50 ]. However, Kiger (2020) found that sharing individualized learning plans with teachers aligned feedback with learning goals but did not improve students' perceived use of feedback [ 64 ]

Two papers of this set pointed out the importance of goal-oriented feedback, a dynamic process that depends on discussion of goal setting between teachers and students [ 50 ] and influences how individuals experience, approach, and respond to upcoming learning activities [ 34 ]. Goal-oriented feedback should be embedded in the learning experience of the clinical workplace, as it can enhance students' engagement in safe feedback dialogues [ 50 ]. Ideally, each feedback encounter in the WBL context should conclude, in addition to setting a plan of action to achieve the desired goal, with a reflection on the next goal [ 50 ].

Feedback strategies within the WBL environment. (i.e., feedback dimension)

In undergraduate WBL environments, there are several tasks and feedback opportunities organized in the undergraduate clinical workplace that can enable feedback processes:

Questions from clinical teachers to students are a feedback strategy [ 74 ]. There are different types of questions that the teacher can use, either to clarify concepts, to reach the correct answer, or to facilitate self-correction [ 74 ]. Usually, questions can be used in conjunction with other communication strategies, such as pauses, which enable self-correction by the student [ 74 ]. Students can also ask questions to obtain feedback on their performance [ 54 ]. However, question-and-answer as a feedback strategy usually provides information on either correct or incorrect answers and fewer suggestions for improvement, rendering it less constructive as a feedback strategy [ 82 ].

Direct observation of performance by default is needed to be able to provide information to be used as input in the feedback process [ 33 , 46 , 49 , 86 ]. In the process of observation, teachers can include clarification of objectives (i.e., feed-up dimension) and suggestions for an action plan (i.e., feedforward) [ 50 ]. Accordingly, Schopper et al. (2016) showed that students valued being observed while interviewing patients, as they received feedback that helped them become more efficient and effective as interviewers and communicators [ 33 ]. Moreover, it is widely described that direct observation improves feedback credibility [ 33 , 40 , 84 ]. Ideally, observation should be deliberate [ 33 , 83 ], informal or spontaneous [ 33 ], conducted by a (clinical) expert [ 46 , 86 ], provided immediately after the observation, and clinical teacher if possible, should schedule or be alert on follow-up observations to promote closing the gap between current and desired performance [ 46 ].

Workplace-based assessments (WBAs), by definition, entail direct observation of performance during authentic task demonstration [ 39 , 46 , 56 , 87 ]. WBAs can significantly impact behavioral change in medical students [ 55 ]. Organizing and designing formative WBAs and embedding these in a feedback dialogue is essential for effective learning [ 31 ].

Summative organization of WBAs is a well described barrier for feedback uptake in the clinical workplace [ 35 , 46 ]. If feedback is perceived as summative, or organized as a pass-fail decision, students may be less inclined to use the feedback for future learning [ 52 ]. According to Schopper et al. (2016), using a scale within a WBA makes students shift their focus during the clinical interaction and see it as an assessment with consequences [ 33 ]. Harrison et al. (2016) pointed out that an environment that only contains assessments with a summative purpose will not lead to a culture of learning and improving performance [ 56 ]. The recommendation is to separate the formative and summative WBAs, as feedback in summative instances is often not recognized as a learning opportunity or an instance to seek feedback [ 54 ]. In terms of the design, an organizational format is needed to clarify to students how formative assessments can promote learning from feedback [ 56 ]. Harrison et al. (2016) identified that enabling students to have more control over their assessments, designing authentic assessments, and facilitating long-term mentoring could improve receptivity to formative assessment feedback [ 56 ].

Multiple WBA instruments and systems are reported in the literature. Sox et al. (2014) used a detailed evaluation form to help students improve their clinical case presentation skills. They found that feedback on oral presentations provided by supervisors using a detailed evaluation form improved clerkship students’ oral presentation skills [ 78 ]. Daelmans et al. (2006) suggested that a formal in-training assessment programme composed by 19 assessments that provided structured feedback, could promote observation and verbal feedback opportunities through frequent assessments [ 43 ]. However, in this setting, limited student-staff interactions still hindered feedback follow-up [ 43 ]. Designing frequent WBA improves feedback credibility [ 28 ]. Long et al. (2021) emphasized that students' responsiveness to assessment feedback hinges on its perceived credibility, underlining the importance of credibility for students to effectively engage and improve their performance [ 31 ].

The mini-CEX is one of the most widely described WBA instruments in the literature. Students perceive that the mini-CEX allows them to be observed and encourages the development of interviewing skills [ 33 ]. The mini-CEX can provide feedback that improves students' clinical skills [ 58 , 60 ], as it incorporates a structure for discussing the student's strengths and weaknesses and the design of a written action plan [ 39 , 80 ]. When mini-CEXs are incorporated as part of a system of WBA, such as programmatic assessment, students feel confident in seeking feedback after observation, and being systematic allows for follow-up [ 39 ]. Students suggested separating grading from observation and using the mini-CEX in more informal situations [ 33 ].

Clinical encounter cards allow students to receive weekly feedback and make them request more feedback as the clerkship progresses [ 65 ]. Moreover, encounter cards stimulate that feedback is given by supervisors, and students are more satisfied with the feedback process [ 72 ]. With encounter card feedback, students are responsible for asking a supervisor for feedback before a clinical encounter, and supervisors give students written and verbal comments about their performance after the encounter [ 42 , 72 ]. Encounter cards enhance the use of feedback and add approximately one minute to the length of the clinical encounter, so they are well accepted by students and supervisors [ 72 ]. Bennett (2006) identified that Instant Feedback Cards (IFC) facilitated mid-rotation feedback [ 38 ]. Feedback encounter card comments must be discussed between students and supervisors; otherwise, students may perceive it as impersonal, static, formulaic, and incomplete [ 59 ].

Self-assessments can change students' feedback orientation, transforming them into coproducers of learning [ 68 ]. Self-assessments promote the feedback process [ 68 ]. Some articles emphasize the importance of organizing self-assessments before receiving feedback from supervisors, for example, discussing their appraisal with the supervisor [ 46 , 52 ]. In designing a feedback encounter, starting with a self-assessment as feed-up, discussing with the supervisor, and identifying areas for improvement is recommended, as part of the feedback dialogue [ 68 ].

Peer feedback as an organized activity allows students to develop strategies to observe and give feedback to other peers [ 61 ]. Students can act as the feedback provider or receiver, fostering understanding of critical comments and promoting evaluative judgment for their clinical practice [ 61 ]. Within clerkships, enabling the sharing of feedback information among peers allows for a better understanding and acceptance of feedback [ 52 ]. However, students can find it challenging to take on the peer assessor/feedback provider role, as they prefer to avoid social conflicts [ 28 , 61 ]. Moreover, it has been described that they do not trust the judgment of their peers because they are not experts, although they know the procedures, tasks, and steps well and empathize with their peer status in the learning process [ 61 ].

Bedside-teaching encounters (BTEs) provide timely feedback and are an opportunity for verbal feedback during performance [ 74 ]. Rizan et al. (2014) explored timely feedback delivered within BTEs and determined that it promotes interaction that constructively enhances learner development through various corrective strategies (e.g., question and answers, pauses, etc.). However, if the feedback given during the BTEs was general, unspecific, or open-ended, it could go unnoticed [ 74 ]. Torre et al. (2005) investigated which integrated feedback activities and clinical tasks occurred on clerkship rotations and assessed students' perceived quality in each teaching encounter [ 81 ]. The feedback activities reported were feedback on written clinical history, physical examination, differential diagnosis, oral case presentation, a daily progress note, and bedside feedback. Students considered all these feedback activities high-quality learning opportunities, but they were more likely to receive feedback when teaching was at the bedside than at other teaching locations [ 81 ].

Case presentations are an opportunity for feedback within WBL contexts [ 67 , 73 ]. However, both students and supervisors struggled to identify them as feedback moments, and they often dismissed questions and clarifications around case presentations as feedback [ 73 ]. Joshi (2017) identified case presentations as a way for students to ask for informal or spontaneous supervisor feedback [ 63 ].

Organization of follow-up feedback and action plans (i.e., feedforward dimension).

Feedback that generates use and response from students is characterized by two-way communication and embedded in a dialogue [ 30 ]. Feedback must be future-focused [ 29 ], and a feedback encounter should be followed by planning the next observation [ 46 , 87 ]. Follow-up feedback could be organized as a future self-assessment, reflective practice by the student, and/or a discussion with the supervisor or coach [ 68 ]. The literature describes that a lack of student interaction with teachers makes follow-up difficult [ 43 ]. According to Haffling et al. (2011), follow-up feedback sessions improve students' satisfaction with feedback compared to students who do not have follow-up sessions. In addition, these same authors reported that a second follow-up session allows verification of improved performances or confirmation that the skill was acquired [ 55 ].

Although feedback encounter forms are a recognized way of obtaining information about performance (i.e., feedback dimension), the literature does not provide many clear examples of how they may impact the feedforward phase. For example, Joshi et al. (2016) consider a feedback form with four fields (i.e., what did you do well, advise the student on what could be done to improve performance, indicate the level of proficiency, and personal details of the tutor). In this case, the supervisor highlighted what the student could improve but not how, which is the missing phase of the co-constructed action plan [ 63 ]. Whichever WBA instrument is used in clerkships to provide feedback, it should include a "next steps" box [ 44 ], and it is recommended to organize a long-term use of the WBA instrument so that those involved get used to it and improve interaction and feedback uptake [ 55 ]. RIME-based feedback (Reporting, Interpreting, Managing, Educating) is considered an interesting example, as it is perceived as helpful to students in knowing what they need to improve in their performance [ 44 ]. Hochberg (2017) implemented formative mid-clerkship assessments to enhance face-to-face feedback conversations and co-create an improvement plan [ 59 ]. Apps for structuring and storing feedback improve the amount of verbal and written feedback. In the study of Joshi et al. (2016), a reasonable proportion of students (64%) perceived that these app tools help them improve their performance during rotations [ 63 ].

Several studies indicate that an action plan as part of the follow-up feedback is essential for performance improvement and learning [ 46 , 55 , 60 ]. An action plan corresponds to an agreed-upon strategy for improving, confirming, or correcting performance. Bing-You et al. (2017) determined that only 12% of the articles included in their scoping review incorporated an action plan for learners [ 32 ]. Holmboe et al. (2004) reported that only 11% of the feedback sessions following a mini-CEX included an action plan [ 60 ]. Suhoyo et al. (2017) also reported that only 55% of mini-CEX encounters contained an action plan [ 80 ]. Other authors reported that action plans are not commonly offered during feedback encounters [ 77 ]. Sokol-Hessner et al. (2010) implemented feedback card comments with a space to provide written feedback and a specific action plan. In their results, 96% contained positive comments, and only 5% contained constructive comments [ 77 ]. In summary, although the recommendation is to include a “next step” box in the feedback instruments, evidence shows these items are not often used for constructive comments or action plans.

Sociocultural factors influencing the organization of feedback processes.

Multiple sociocultural factors influence interaction in feedback encounters, promoting or hampering the productivity of the feedback processes.

Clinical learning culture

Context impacts feedback processes [ 30 , 82 ], and there are barriers to incorporating actionable feedback in the clinical learning context. The clinical learning culture is partly determined by the clinical context, which can be unpredictable [ 29 , 46 , 68 ], as the available patients determine learning opportunities. Supervisors are occupied by a high workload, which results in limited time or priority for teaching [ 35 , 46 , 48 , 55 , 68 , 83 ], hindering students’ feedback-seeking behavior [ 54 ], and creating a challenge for the balance between patient care and student mentoring [ 35 ].

Clinical workplace culture does not always purposefully prioritize instances for feedback processes [ 83 , 84 ]. This often leads to limited direct observation [ 55 , 68 ] and the provision of poorly informed feedback. It is also evident that this affects trust between clinical teachers and students [ 52 ]. Supervisors consider feedback a low priority in clinical contexts [ 35 ] due to low compensation and lack of protected time [ 83 ]. In particular, lack of time appears to be the most significant and well-known barrier to frequent observation and workplace feedback [ 35 , 43 , 48 , 62 , 67 , 83 ].

The clinical environment is hierarchical [ 68 , 80 ] and can make students not consider themselves part of the team and feel like a burden to their supervisor [ 68 ]. This hierarchical learning environment can lead to unidirectional feedback, limit dialogue during feedback processes, and hinder the seeking, uptake, and use of feedback [ 67 , 68 ]. In a learning culture where feedback is not supported, learners are less likely to want to seek it and feel motivated and engaged in their learning [ 83 ]. Furthermore, it has been identified that clinical supervisors lack the motivation to teach [ 48 ] and the intention to observe or reobserve performance [ 86 ].

In summary, the clinical context and WBL culture do not fully use the potential of a feedback process aimed at closing learning gaps. However, concrete actions shown in the literature can be taken to improve the effectiveness of feedback by organizing the learning context. For example, McGinness et al. (2022) identified that students felt more receptive to feedback when working in a safe, nonjudgmental environment [ 67 ]. Moreover, supervisors and trainees identified the learning culture as key to establishing an open feedback dialogue [ 73 ]. Students who perceive culture as supportive and formative can feel more comfortable performing tasks and more willing to receive feedback [ 73 ].

Relationships

There is a consensus in the literature that trusting and long-term relationships improve the chances of actionable feedback. However, relationships between supervisors and students in the clinical workplace are often brief and not organized as more longitudinally [ 68 , 83 ], leaving little time to establish a trustful relationship [ 68 ]. Supervisors change continuously, resulting in short interactions that limit the creation of lasting relationships over time [ 50 , 68 , 83 ]. In some contexts, it is common for a student to have several supervisors who have their own standards in the observation of performance [ 46 , 56 , 68 , 83 ]. A lack of stable relationships results in students having little engagement in feedback [ 68 ]. Furthermore, in case of summative assessment programmes, the dual role of supervisors (i.e., assessing and giving feedback) makes feedback interactions perceived as summative and can complicate the relationship [ 83 ].

Repeatedly, the articles considered in this review describe that long-term and stable relationships enable the development of trust and respect [ 35 , 62 ] and foster feedback-seeking behavior [ 35 , 67 ] and feedback-giver behavior [ 39 ]. Moreover, constructive and positive relationships enhance students´ use of and response to feedback [ 30 ]. For example, Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (LICs) promote stable relationships, thus enhancing the impact of feedback [ 83 ]. In a long-term trusting relationship, feedback can be straightforward and credible [ 87 ], there are more opportunities for student observation, and the likelihood of follow-up and actionable feedback improves [ 83 ]. Johnson et al. (2020) pointed out that within a clinical teacher-student relationship, the focus must be on establishing psychological safety; thus, the feedback conversations might be transformed [ 62 ].

Stable relationships enhance feedback dialogues, which offer an opportunity to co-construct learning and propose and negotiate aspects of the design of learning strategies [ 62 ].

Students as active agents in the feedback processes

The feedback response learners generate depends on the type of feedback information they receive, how credible the source of feedback information is, the relationship between the receiver and the giver, and the relevance of the information delivered [ 49 ]. Garino (2020) noted that students who are most successful in using feedback are those who do not take criticism personally, who understand what they need to improve and know they can do so, who value and feel meaning in criticism, are not surprised to receive it, and who are motivated to seek new feedback and use effective learning strategies [ 52 ]. Successful users of feedback ask others for help, are intentional about their learning, know what resources to use and when to use them, listen to and understand a message, value advice, and use effective learning strategies. They regulate their emotions, find meaning in the message, and are willing to change [ 52 ].

Student self-efficacy influences the understanding and use of feedback in the clinical workplace. McGinness et al. (2022) described various positive examples of self-efficacy regarding feedback processes: planning feedback meetings with teachers, fostering good relationships with the clinical team, demonstrating interest in assigned tasks, persisting in seeking feedback despite the patient workload, and taking advantage of opportunities for feedback, e.g., case presentations [ 67 ].

When students are encouraged to seek feedback aligned with their own learning objectives, they promote feedback information specific to what they want to learn and improve and enhance the use of feedback [ 53 ]. McGinness et al. (2022) identified that the perceived relevance of feedback information influenced the use of feedback because students were more likely to ask for feedback if they perceived that the information was useful to them. For example, if students feel part of the clinical team and participate in patient care, they are more likely to seek feedback [ 17 ].

Learning-oriented students aim to seek feedback to achieve clinical competence at the expected level [ 75 ]; they focus on improving their knowledge and skills and on professional development [ 17 ]. Performance-oriented students aim not to fail and to avoid negative feedback [ 17 , 75 ].

For effective feedback processes, including feed-up, feedback, and feedforward, the student must be feedback-oriented, i.e., active, seeking, listening to, interpreting, and acting on feedback [ 68 ]. The literature shows that feedback-oriented students are coproducers of learning [ 68 ] and are more involved in the feedback process [ 51 ]. Additionally, students who are metacognitively aware of their learning process are more likely to use feedback to reduce gaps in learning and performance [ 52 ]. For this, students must recognize feedback when it occurs and understand it when they receive it. Thus, it is important to organize training and promote feedback literacy so that students understand what feedback is, act on it, and improve the quality of feedback and their learning plans [ 68 ].

Table 5 summarizes those feedback tasks, activities, and key features of organizational aspects that enable each phase of the feedback loop based on the literature review.

The present scoping review identified 61 papers that mapped the literature on feedback processes in the WBL environments of undergraduate health professions. This review explored how feedback processes are organized in these learning contexts using the feedback loop framework. Given the specific characteristics of feedback processes in undergraduate clinical learning, three main findings were identified on how feedback processes are being conducted in the clinical environment and how these processes could be organized to support feedback processes.

First, the literature lacks a balance between the three dimensions of the feedback loop. In this regard, most of the articles in this review focused on reporting experiences or strategies for delivering feedback information (i.e., feedback dimension). Credible and objective feedback information is based on direct observation [ 46 ] and occurs within an interaction or a dialogue [ 62 , 88 ]. However, only having credible and objective information does not ensure that it will be considered, understood, used, and put into practice by the student [ 89 ].

Feedback-supporting actions aligned with goals and priorities facilitate effective feedback processes [ 89 ] because goal-oriented feedback focuses on students' learning needs [ 7 ]. In contrast, this review showed that only a minority of the studies highlighted the importance of aligning learning objectives and feedback (i.e., the feed-up dimension). To overcome this, supervisors and students must establish goals and agreements before starting clinical practice, as it allows students to measure themselves on a defined basis [ 90 , 91 ] and enhances students' feedback-seeking behavior [ 39 , 92 ] and responsiveness to feedback [ 83 ]. In addition, learning goals should be shared, and co-constructed, through a dialogue [ 50 , 88 , 90 , 92 ]. In fact, relationship-based feedback models emphasize setting shared goals and plans as part of the feedback process [ 68 ].

Many of the studies acknowledge the importance of establishing an action plan and promoting the use of feedback (i.e., feedforward). However, there is yet limited insight on how to best implement strategies that support the use of action plans, improve performance and close learning gaps. In this regard, it is described that delivering feedback without perceiving changes, results in no effect or impact on learning [ 88 ]. To determine if a feedback loop is closed, observing a change in the student's response is necessary. In other words, feedback does not work without repeating the same task [ 68 ], so teachers need to observe subsequent tasks to notice changes [ 88 ]. While feedforward is fundamental to long-term performance, it is shown that more research is needed to determine effective actions to be implemented in the WBL environment to close feedback loops.

Second, there is a need for more knowledge about designing feedback activities in the WBL environment that will generate constructive feedback for learning. WBA is the most frequently reported feedback activity in clinical workplace contexts [ 39 , 46 , 56 , 87 ]. Despite the efforts of some authors to use WBAs as a formative assessment and feedback opportunity, in several studies, a summative component of the WBA was presented as a barrier to actionable feedback [ 33 , 56 ]. Students suggest separating grading from observation and using, for example, the mini-CEX in informal situations [ 33 ]. Several authors also recommend disconnecting the summative components of WBAs to avoid generating emotions that can limit the uptake and use of feedback [ 28 , 93 ]. Other literature recommends purposefully designing a system of assessment using low-stakes data points for feedback and learning. Accordingly, programmatic assessment is a framework that combines both the learning and the decision-making function of assessment [ 94 , 95 ]. Programmatic assessment is a practical approach for implementing low-stakes as a continuum, giving opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance and having the student as an active agent [ 96 ]. This approach enables the incorporation of low-stakes data points that target student learning [ 93 ] and provide performance-relevant information (i.e., meaningful feedback) based on direct observations during authentic professional activities [ 46 ]. Using low-stakes data points, learners make sense of information about their performance and use it to enhance the quality of their work or performance [ 96 , 97 , 98 ]. Implementing multiple instances of feedback is more effective than providing it once because it promotes closing feedback loops by giving the student opportunities to understand the feedback, make changes, and see if those changes were effective [ 89 ].

Third, the support provided by the teacher is fundamental and should be built into a reliable and long-term relationship, where the teacher must take the role of coach rather than assessor, and students should develop feedback agency and be active in seeking and using feedback to improve performance. Although it is recognized that institutional efforts over the past decades have focused on training teachers to deliver feedback, clinical supervisors' lack of teaching skills is still identified as a barrier to workplace feedback [ 99 ]. In particular, research indicates that clinical teachers lack the skills to transform the information obtained from an observation into constructive feedback [ 100 ]. Students are more likely to use feedback if they consider it credible and constructive [ 93 ] and based on stable relationships [ 93 , 99 , 101 ]. In trusting relationships, feedback can be straightforward and credible, and the likelihood of follow-up and actionable feedback improves [ 83 , 88 ]. Coaching strategies can be enhanced by teachers building an educational alliance that allows for trustworthy relationships or having supervisors with an exclusive coaching role [ 14 , 93 , 102 ].

Last, from a sociocultural perspective, individuals are the main actors in the learning process. Therefore, feedback impacts learning only if students engage and interact with it [ 11 ]. Thus, feedback design and student agency appear to be the main features of effective feedback processes. Accordingly, the present review identified that feedback design is a key feature for effective learning in complex environments such as WBL. Feedback in the workplace must ideally be organized and implemented to align learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessments, allowing learners to learn, practice, and close feedback loops [ 88 ]. To guide students toward performances that reflect long-term learning, an intensive formative learning phase is needed, in which multiple feedback processes are included that shape students´ further learning [ 103 ]. This design would promote student uptake of feedback for subsequent performance [ 1 ].

Strengths and limitations

The strengths of this study are (1) the use of an established framework, the Arksey and O'Malley's framework [ 22 ]. We included the step of socializing the results with stakeholders, which allowed the team to better understand the results from another perspective and offer a realistic look. (2) Using the feedback loop as a theoretical framework strengthened the results and gave a more thorough explanation of the literature regarding feedback processes in the WBL context. (3) our team was diverse and included researchers from different disciplines as well as a librarian.

The present scoping review has several limitations. Although we adhered to the recommended protocols and methodologies, some relevant papers may have been omitted. The research team decided to select original studies and reviews of the literature for the present scoping review. This caused some articles, such as guidelines, perspectives, and narrative papers, to be excluded from the current study.

One of the inclusion criteria was a focus on undergraduate students. However, some papers that incorporated undergraduate and postgraduate participants were included, as these supported the results of this review. Most articles involved medical students. Although the authors did not limit the search to medicine, maybe some articles involving students from other health disciplines needed to be included, considering the search in other databases or journals.

The results give insight in how feedback could be organized within the clinical workplace to promote feedback processes. On a small scale, i.e., in the feedback encounter between a supervisor and a learner, feedback should be organized to allow for follow-up feedback, thus working on required learning and performance goals. On a larger level, i.e., in the clerkship programme or a placement rotation, feedback should be organized through appropriate planning of subsequent tasks and activities.

More insight is needed in designing a closed loop feedback process, in which specific attention is needed in effective feedforward practices. The feedback that stimulates further action and learning requires a safe and trustful work and learning environment. Understanding the relationship between an individual and his or her environment is a challenge for determining the impact of feedback and must be further investigated within clinical WBL environments. Aligning the dimensions of feed-up, feedback and feedforward includes careful attention to teachers’ and students’ feedback literacy to assure that students can act on feedback in a constructive way. In this line, how to develop students' feedback agency within these learning environments needs further research.

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Fuentes-Cimma, J., Sluijsmans, D., Riquelme, A. et al. Designing feedback processes in the workplace-based learning of undergraduate health professions education: a scoping review. BMC Med Educ 24 , 440 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05439-6

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The Literary Analysis Essay: A Teacher's Guide
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay Step by Step
The Elements of a Literary Analysis Essay
How to Sequence a Literary Analysis Essay Unit
Literary Analysis Essay by S J Brull

VIDEO

English 1302: Everyday Use Summary w/Characterization Assignment
Literary Analysis Essay Presentation Overview
Literary Analysis Essay explained and discussed
How Can I Easily Write a Basic Literary Analysis Essay?
Strategies in Teaching Literacy Through Literature: IMAGE ANALYSIS
Planning the Literary Analysis Essay The Awakening

COMMENTS

Teaching Literary Analysis
Teaching Literary Analysis. Guide students through the five steps of understanding and writing literary analysis: choosing and focusing a topic, gathering, presenting and analyzing textual evidence, and concluding. Literary analysis is a vital stage in the development of students' critical thinking skills.
Teaching Literary Analysis: 17 Questions To Guide Your Students
Teaching Literary Analysis to Secondary Students. Yes, it's important to ask students for details aboutwhat they read. ... So, before asking students to showcase their knowledge in assessment form (aka the feared and fretted literary analysis essay), we must teach them how to read and analyze a text. Luckily, with the right approach, teaching ...
The Literary Analysis Essay: A Teacher's Guide
The Literary Analysis Essay: A Teacher's Guide. Teaching essay writing is no simple task: The pressure is on: this is a skill that students need, are tested on, and will need to harness for the next grade level all the way into college. Students somehow forget what they've learned in between assignments.
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
Table of contents. Step 1: Reading the text and identifying literary devices. Step 2: Coming up with a thesis. Step 3: Writing a title and introduction. Step 4: Writing the body of the essay. Step 5: Writing a conclusion. Other interesting articles.
Secrets of Teaching the Literary Analysis Essay
She also geeks out about literary analysis, inquiry-based learning, and classroom technology integration. When Lindsay is not teaching, she enjoys playing with her two kids, running, and getting lost in a good book. Teach literary analysis essay skills in your English classroom using my carefully-scaffolded approach focused on visual texts and ...
Teaching Literary Analysis in Middle School
I had been teaching upper elementary in the three years prior, and we had done some on-demand literary analysis reading responses, but really digging into a literary analysis essay overwhelmed me. Truth be told, my teaching strengths at the time were primarily reading and math. I had always had to dig deep to find my writing teacher voice.
How to Write Literary Analysis
Literary analysis involves examining all the parts of a novel, play, short story, or poem—elements such as character, setting, tone, and imagery—and thinking about how the author uses those elements to create certain effects. A literary essay isn't a book review: you're not being asked whether or not you liked a book or whether you'd ...
Teaching Effective Literary Analysis Essays
Teaching Effective Literary Analysis Essays. Just a few days ago I was blogging about how I literally Googled, "How do you teach effective literary analysis essays?". And although middle school ELA teachers across the nation are expected to teach 12, 13, and 14 year olds how to analyze a piece of literature in the form of an essay, there ...
How to Sequence a Literary Analysis Essay Unit
The Literary Analysis Mega Bundle by Bespoke ELA contains several self and peer revision forms to take students through the revision process.. Practice Grading & Resubmitting . The final step in scaffolding the literary analysis essay circles back to the beginning of the process. Students take their essays through a round of practice grading using the rubric.
10 Tips for Scaffolding Literary Analysis
Keep reading for TEN tips that will help with scaffolding literary analysis. Give a PRE- and post-ASSESSMENT. Students are motivated when they can see their growth. Giving them a pre-assessment that is similar to the post-assessment is one way to provide that perspective. An authentic literary analysis assignment usually involves writing an ...
How to Deepen Students' Literary Analysis Essays
It showed that they understood the basics of literary analysis and that they knew how to work together to make something better. #4 Scaffold the Writing Process. With any new skill, scaffolding is critical. I followed the same theory when teaching literary analysis, and I broke down how to write a literary analysis essay into small, bite-sized ...
How to Write a Literary Analysis.
Teaching how to write a literary analysis satisfies the following ELA Common Core Standards. RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. L.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the ...
12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays
Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap. City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative. Table of contents. Example 1: Poetry. Example 2: Fiction. Example 3: Poetry. Attribution. The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
Solution #2: Cut Out Parts of the Essay. If you know that your students will have other writing opportunities in your course, you could cut down parts of the essay to help ease your schedule. If your focus for this essay is to truly just focus on the literary analysis then you have a few options.
9 Different Methods and Strategies in Teaching English Literature [2024
Literary Analysis Essays: Guide students through the process of writing literary analysis essays. Teach them how to formulate a thesis statement, provide textual evidence, and analyze the author's use of literary devices. Comparative Analysis: Have students compare and contrast different literary works, characters, themes, or writing styles ...
10 of the Best Literary Analysis Activities to Elevate Thinking
2. Graphic Organizers. Graphic organizers are one of my go-to strategies for elevating thinking. We can use them to differentiate and to guide students as we work in small groups. I like to keep a variety of literary analysis graphic organizers for any text on hand so that I can be responsive.
15 of the Best Questions for Teaching Literary Analysis
When I'm teaching a piece of fiction, I like to have set questions I can use throughout the year to ask my students. As students answer the same question about various texts throughout the year, they improve their analytical skills and begin to form a better understanding of how literature analysis works. If you are teaching response to ...
Literary Analysis Essay Step By Step Teaching Resources
Teaching Literary Analysis in middle school is finally broken down with this complete reading and essay writing unit. This unit includes 24 done-for-you lesson plans, reference pages, completed essays, and 40 literary analysis reading response examples with explanations and teaching for students.
Writing a Literary Essay: Analyzing a Model
A. Analyzing a Model: The Painted Essay (30 minutes) Redirect students' attention to the model literary essay and focus them on the first paragraph. Read the paragraph aloud, inviting them to read it aloud with you. Invite students to turn and talk to an elbow partner, and cold call students to share out:
Literary Analysis Text And Essay Teaching Resources
The Literary Maven. 4.8. (13) $5.00. Google Drive™ folder. This resource is designed to guide students step by step through the process of writing a text dependent analysis essay and can be used with any text: a novel, short story, play, nonfiction piece, etc. The resources included can be printed, used digitally, or a combination of the two.
Literature Analysis Using Mentor Texts
When I developed this realistic fiction unit, I wanted to do so with mentor texts in mind. This unit focuses on literature analysis using mentor texts and includes studying literary concepts, interacting with the text, and collaborating with others. This 300+ page unit takes 4 weeks and includes mentor text examples for grades 6-8, so you can ...
Teaching the Essay from Analytical Grammar
Teaching the Essay is designed for the secondary student - junior high age and above. As Robin Finley, the author of Teaching the Essay, asserts, writing a literary analysis essay involves fluency, mechanics, and structure . Fluency has to do with the "gift of gab" and the ability to put words on paper. Some children are natural writers ...
Designing feedback processes in the workplace-based learning of
Two themes were identified in the qualitative analysis: (1) The organization of the feedback processes in workplace-based learning settings, and (2) Sociocultural factors influencing the organization of feedback processes. The literature describes multiple teaching and assessment activities that generate feedback information.