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.
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 #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 #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.
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.
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 #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.
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
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!
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!
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