March Unit: Favorite Children's Book Analysis
An engaging literary analysis unit you can use as a template for ANY literary analysis writing unit.
Truth: I designed this unit for a school I’ve been working with this year, and I fell in love with it so much that I’m starting it with my own students next week.
As you probably know, I believe strongly that the way to help students become most successful with analytical writing is to begin teaching the transferable skills of analytical writing (developing a claim, finding evidence, using evidence to support ideas, writing with passion and authority, finding a structure that fits their argument) using texts about which the students have expertise. I believe it so much I wrote a whole book about it. (And, next to this community, it’s the thing I am most proud of.)
We can do this in lots of ways. Let kids write about movies and video games and songs and albums and restaurants and sports games, etc. But there may come a time when you want them to, then, make that leap — take those skills they’ve honed and apply them to an actual book.
(There’s a much longer conversation to be had here another day about if students ever need to write literary analysis and why and how much. Let’s get a glass of wine sometime.)
So. This is that unit. Students are writing literary analysis. But the text in question here isn’t a whole-class text from the canon, it’s their favorite children’s book. And this is something even your grumpiest writers can get into.
Can I tell you a secret about this unit plan? This is the very most important thing: the lessons below work for any literary analysis writing unit. All you have to do is take out my mentor text examples and put in your own! Consider the lessons:
Studying mentor texts for musts and mights
Finding an authentic structure
Writing a compelling introduction
Writing a claim
Using text evidence
Putting personal connections into analysis
Using vivid verbs
In many ways, this could be a one-stop shop for your analytical writing units. Let’s dive in.