My favorite element to teach my students is writing especially by using google forms to write. My students struggle the most with writing their literary analysis essay. After trying numerous methods and tweaking my curriculum each semester, I feel that I have found a better way to teach my students how to write their essay: Google Forms.

If you have never used Google Forms before, this format is similar to a survey that allows you to ask the students questions, insert media such as pictures, and videos, and divide the forms into easy to use sections.

Google Forms allow students to chunk their essay into smaller manageable sections with questions that prompt their thinking in a detailed way that provides continuous reminders for almost each and every sentence of their essay.

Google Forms Setup

There are six forms that I create in order to help my students better understand how to write the essay.

1. Thesis Statement
2. Body Paragraph #1
3. Body Paragraph #2
4. Body Paragraph #3
5. Introduction
6. Conclusion

Google Form Settings

Google Forms need to have certain settings in order to make it user friendly for the students so you can view each student’s google form. Students can also receive a copy of their form and have the ability to edit their response if they do not finish in one setting.

Disclaimer: Students should not just leave their form up because they run a risk of it refreshing and them losing all of their work. I never have my questions be required so that if a student does not finish, they can skip questions and submit it so that they can receive an email to edit their response later.

See my settings below:

Thesis Statement Google Form

Since the thesis statement is the most important element in this essay,  students start with this form and are not to move on to any other form until they have approval from Mrs. Rice.  This form focuses on the following elements:

• Review of the writing process for a literary analysis essay
• Essay prompt reflection and what it asks the student
• Selection of theme ideas
• Thesis Statement Examples
• Thesis Statement Writing

Body Paragraph Google Forms

The hardest part of the students’ essays are the analysis that comes in their body paragraphs. First, I teach the students the difference in what I call Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 analysis.

Level 1 Analysis: Answers are stated directly in the text and mostly are seen as commentary.

Level 2 Analysis: Answers focus on the question: “How does my example prove my theme?”

Level 3 Analysis: Why should I as the reader care? What lesson is that example teaching the reader as it relates to my theme?

The body paragraph Google Forms have students write their topic sentences, cite evidence, analyze their examples, and write a clincher sentence all in one form. I find by having them answer my Level 2 and Level 3 questions right after each piece of evidence, students tend to do better with analysis as a whole. Students also do not feel that they are writing an entire essay because they are answers three questions at a time.

Introduction & Conclusion Google Forms

After completing all of the Body Paragraph Google Forms, students will move on to an introduction and conclusion. Once again the Google Forms will help the students to chunk out the introduction and conclusion and not just ramble on and forget the key elements of either.

How to Build The Essay

Once students have completed all of the Google Forms, I provide one more day that is called the essay building day. I have a PowerPoint that I use to help guide the students on how to build their essay. The basis of this PowerPoint is to take each response of their Google Forms and build a paragraph around those responses. They will need to refine their writing and add in transitional sentences and transitional words.

Student feedback suggests that students love this formatting of essay writing because they do not realize how much they are writing until they are finished with the forms and the essay building.

Happy writing! Your students will love using google forms to write their next essay.