Literary Analysis Teacher Resources

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

Henry David Thoreau and Linda Ronstadt? Ann Tyler and Pete Townshend? Joyce Carol Oates and Pearl Jam? This richly detailed plan pairs classic literature with contemporary music and asks learners to analyze how the theme of conformity is...

A cross-curricular instructional activity combines poetry and history for your middle and high schoolers. The class critically examines Kipling's poem, "White Man's Burden" as historical evidence of the Imperialist ideology popular...

Read and discuss "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and the gender issues that the story brings up. Use articles from the time period to analyze, complete with specific discussion questions. After two days, scholars write an essay based on topics...

"How can a few good words save a pig's life?" Posed with this question, your ELD students explore E.B. White's Charlotte's Web in a meaningful, valuable way. By analyzing specific word choice from the book, especially the excerpts...

The work of Langston Hughes opens the door to research into the origin and legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and how the literature of the period can be viewed as a commentary on race relations in America. In addition, groups are assigned...

Have you ever cheated on a test? What about copied someone else's homework? After reading Colleen Wenke's essay "Too Much Pressure," class members use the provided reading comprehension questions to focus their analysis of important...

Invite your pupils to express their understanding of a novel through a collaborative video project. Groups choose a novel from those you have studied in class, select four scenes, storyboard the scenes, film the scenes, edit the film,...

How do you assess what your pupils have learned over the course of the year? Find out how competent they are at reading and analyzing age-level literature with the ideas presented here. Included in this resource are two suggested...

Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...

James Hurst's short story "The Scarlet Ibis" provides eighth graders with an opportunity to sharpen their literary analysis skills. After a close reading of the text, class members highlight and annotate parts of the dialogue and...

An excerpt from Henry MacNeal Turner's address to the Georgia legislature provides class members with an opportunity to develop their literary analysis skills. Prompted by the provided factual, evaluative, and interpretive questions,...

What's the difference between the main idea of a text and the topic? Take kids through the process of literary analysis with a presentation about finding the main idea and supporting details. Additionally, it guides learners through...

"X" is for exaggeration, and "F" is for fact. To encourage close reading and to improve literary analysis skills, class members annotate fables and tall tales, like Paul Bunyan, with symbols that identify key features of this genre.

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to hone their close reading and literary analysis skills. After annotating their copy of the story, writer's craft an essay in which they analyze...

Young scholars explore literary analysis through the reading of The Hound of the Baskerville's by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this analysis lesson, learners take notes on the literary elements included in the novel. Young scholars write a...

Learners explore And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.  In this analysis lesson, students review the definition of literary analysis and read the book. Learners then write a literary analysis of the book and include specific...

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

Middle schoolers explore the theme of "The Californian's Tale" by Mark Twain. After reading Twain's short story, they identify and study its literary theme. Additionally, they analyze information and relationships in the piece, and write...

Improve your young poets' descriptive writing with this lesson on personification. A SMART board and PowerPoint presentation guide your class through the process of identifying human qualities attributed to various non-human objects. A...

Encourage your readers to make connections between texts with this resource. After compiling notes for each text read (you choose the texts), groups craft skits in which major characters from each text meet. There is a rubric for the...

The emotional and spiritual oppression of slavery in the African-American experience is the focus of this lesson. Middle schoolers analyze various texts by Frederick Douglass and Maya Angelou related to freedom and oppression. They use...

Middle schoolers read and review informational texts, analyze cause and effect, and distinguish fact from opinion. They assess a "one-minute mystery" you read aloud for cause and effect relationships. Resource includes complete set of...

"How can a magazine reflect a particular time and culture?" Using this prompt, your class explores the Victorian Era as it relates to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. They can also play the "Victorian Women's Rights" game for the year 1840...