5 Literary Analysis Teaching Strategies

If you’ve had a chance to check out my Literary Analysis Writing Unit, then you know I spent months making sure I broke down the complexity of my literary analysis teaching strategies into manageable chunks for students and teachers.

When I first started teaching literary analysis writing, I had almost nothing in terms of resources, so I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed in case you needed to start teaching it tomorrow.

I also want to make sure you teach in a way that eliminates your students writing things like, “I’m going to talk about…” ????

THE WORST. Right?

Here are some quick literary analysis teaching strategies that get results.

These lesson ideas and teaching strategies are some things I have learned while teaching the literary analysis essay for five years in middle school ELA as well as while I was creating my HUGE 25-lesson Literary Analysis Writing Unit.

Let Students Pick Their Literature to Analyze:

If you look at the literary analysis unit, you see that I give teachers and students the option to all read the same short stories OR to give them the option to pick (I still curate a list of texts to choose from for my sanity).

This is because the more buy-in students have, the more quality writing you’re going to get out of them.

My first years of teaching the literary analysis essay, we all read the same stories (and I still recommend that method if you need to do that for your sanity), but if you have the ability and time to let them pick their own text, you will see an immediate return in their writing results.

Use My FREE Literary Analysis Reference Booklet

I know I keep talking about this free booklet, but literary analysis is complex, has a lot of steps when broken down, and also has a lot of components students need to include to create a quality final product.

This booklet gives them so many tools to be independent literary analysis essay writers and it’s also a great teacher tool, because you can remind them to check it if they have a question related to its contents!

Model, Model, and Model Some More

I’ve said this before, but I truly believe the reason my students’ ELA proficiency scores increased so drastically in just two short years is because I modeled everything I did right in front of them and/or I created examples of EVERYTHING.

Student’s don’t get stuck on what to write because examples are included.

 Let Students Work in Partners

I talk about this in my Literary Analysis Writing Unit, but partner work during essays will change your life.

Ever had a student say:

“I have no idea what the theme is.”

“Where do I find text evidence?”

“I don’t know what to write about.”

Partners will change your classroom forever.

I try to have every student reading the same text as another classmate, but partnerships can work even without the same texts.

Any time students have a question like this, instead of me doing all the heavy lifting, I can simply say, “Why don’t you ask your partner what they wrote?”

They can ask their partner and I can help a lot more students each class period because I am not stuck at the same students’ desk each and every day.

Writing Conferences Made Easy

I believe the best way to do writing conferences is to just do them. By having lots of examples, modeling, and creating partnerships among students (p.s. all of this is done for you in my Literary Analysis Writing Unit) you have set them up for success when you ask them to write.

This means you now actually have time to individually conference with students.

My best trick for making them quick and not awkward?

Simply go to a student, ask them if you can read their response, read it, and then BOOM! You’ll both have tons to talk and conference about.

If you’re like, okay this all sounds amazing… Just >> CLICK HERE << to check out the full Literary Analysis Writing Unit.

Free Literary Analysis Reference Booklet

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

This FREE Literary Analysis Booklet has 13 different reference pages for middle school students. They can use them as they do simple responses to reading work or as they navigate their way through complete literary analysis essays.

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

These reference pages support turning your students into analytical readers and writers in no time.

>> CLICK HERE << to snag your FREE Literary Analysis Booklet.