An End-of-the-Year Essay Unit Plan that Brings Students + Literature Together

When Allison and I wrote Beyond Literary Analysis, we read thousands of pieces of writing in the quest to figure out what kind of analysis professional, published writer truly write outside academia. In other words, beyond what English teachers have culturally and historically deemed to be our analytical territory, what kind of analytical writing will […]

Mini-Mentors for Literary Analysis(+ a Sneak Peek at a BIG New Project!)

Catch up on the whole mini-mentors series! Mini-Mentors for Review Writing, Prompt-Based Writing, and Revision! In the previous iterations of this series, I’ve suggested some ways you might use these mini-mentors in your own classroom: as sentence study warm-ups, as whole-class lessons, in small-group and individual writing conferences. But, you’ll notice something different and special […]

The Presents of Mind: I’m Thankful for… Letters!

Last month, I introduced two new means of reflection–a set of brainstorming questions inspired by Reading with Presence and a “poetry prescription” activity–that I hoped to implement in the weeks that followed. Today, I’m here with an update. Readers, they worked!  The poem analysis letters inspired by The Paris Review’s “Poetry Rx” column were full […]

The Wonder of Whipstitch: Poetry as Literary Analysis

We are delighted to share a guest post today from middle school teacher Elizabeth Oosterheert. You might remember her from a post earlier this year! You can connect with her on Twitter @oosterheerte.  Ah, spring. It’s that vibrant time when my “garden” of students begins to blossom beautifully, and the seeds planted earlier in the […]