Teaching · Archive
Teaching Archive
Everything published on teaching literary analysis, newest first. The curated way in is on the Teaching page.
12 published pieces
Back to Teaching- Oct 22, 2026 What a First Impression Is Made Of A student’s first word for a character can be a fair one. The more useful question is what that impression was made of, and whether it can still explain the rest of the story. Read
- Oct 16, 2026 What the Ending Does to a Detail An ending can change the meaning of an earlier detail without establishing that it foreshadowed what happened. The difference lies in the argument the text can support. Read
- Sep 29, 2026 What a Narrator Knows, and How They Know It Identifying who tells a story is the beginning. The harder reading starts when we ask what supports the teller's account. Read
- Sep 23, 2026 What the Device Name Cannot Tell Us Naming a device correctly and explaining what it does in a passage are two different accomplishments. Writing "explain more" in the margin does not close the space between them. One controlled comparison and one less tidy literary passage show what belongs there. Read
- Sep 21, 2026 The Paragraph That Passes Every Check A paragraph can have every part in place and follow smoothly from sentence to sentence, yet still end up arguing something its opening never claimed. Finding out why changes what to ask the student. Read
- Sep 18, 2026 The Sentence After the Quotation “Explain more” is a fair response to a thin sentence after a good quotation. What it leaves out is what the sentence is missing, and what would help. Read
- Sep 7, 2026 Relevant Isn't the Same as Strong: How to Teach Evidence Quality Students pick a quote that's genuinely on the subject, then have nothing to say about it. Here's how to teach the difference between relevant evidence and strong evidence: the line that gives a student something to say. Read
- Sep 5, 2026 Why Students Notice Details but Miss What Matters Students can annotate a whole page and still not know which details matter. Here's how to teach the judgment close reading depends on: deciding what a text actually gives you reason to weigh. Read
- Sep 3, 2026 How to Teach Students to Choose Strong Textual Evidence Students can find a quote but pick the wrong one, or bring back too much of it. Here's how to teach choosing strong textual evidence: related, supporting, and the words that actually do the work. Read
- Aug 28, 2026 How to Teach Theme Without Getting One-Word Answers Students name a topic and stop there? Here's how to teach the step from a topic to a defensible thematic statement you can test against the text. Read
- Aug 28, 2026 Topic, Theme, Thematic Statement: Making the Difference Clear Topic, theme, and thematic statement get blurred together. Here's a clear classroom convention for what each means, and a quick check for telling them apart. Read
- Aug 28, 2026 Why I Stopped Asking Students to "Find a Quote" "Find a quote" can turn evidence selection into retrieval. Here's why I stopped treating finding as the whole task and made room for student judgment. Read