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12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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• Page ID 40514

• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

• Our Mission

Making Literary Analysis Engaging With Student-Created Companion Books

Literary analysis is rarely students’ favorite task, but having them write for their peers can make it more engaging.

The literary analysis essay is rarely a favorite among English language arts (ELA) teachers and their students. Creativity, student choice, relevance, and authentic audience seem more difficult to incorporate into this traditional, though ubiquitous, genre. 

This challenge is partly because students’ analytical essays rarely have an audience or purpose beyond the English classroom. I’ve tackled this challenge by incorporating technology and student collaboration, inviting students to create guidebooks or companion books for literature.

Many teachers have developed and adapted the companion book strategy to suit their goals and needs, but the following approach is what I’ve found most successful. The activity has made literary analysis a favorite among my students.

Companion Book Basics

Companion books accompany and elaborate on already-published texts (books, series, movies, video games, or TV shows). They target an audience who has already read—and enjoyed—the text but want to know more about it or wish it never ended. 

Companion books aim to provide readers a deeper understanding of concepts in the original work. They give information and teach readers about ideas, concepts, or references they may have missed. Fans of many famous series ( Star Wars , Harry Potter , Marvel comics, etc.) have long made companion books, like the subgenre of “ fanfic ” that supplements these popular texts.

How to make it work

While students will likely balk at the task of writing an essay on the theme of The Outsiders , an assignment to collaborate with classmates and contribute a few chapters for a companion book to The Outsiders can almost sound fun, especially if students get to choose the focus of their own chapters (e.g., “Symbolism and Staying Gold” and “Foreshadowing Death”). I have my students draft a few potential tables of contents for their collaborative companion books and then divvy up the chapters based on who wants to write what. This way, I can still give them individual grades based only on their contributed chapters. 

It’s all the more enjoyable and meaningful if they are able to publish their work. I find Canva for Education is ideal, but I’ve also used Book Creator and other means of publication both digitally and in print. Our librarian supports our book-signing events in the school library, complete with barcoding and shelving students’ companion books—making them real, published authors who are searchable in our library database. I get to enjoy watching current students find and read the companion books of previous students on the library shelves.

Where to start

My favorite way to make this project a success is to have my students do this writing without even knowing it; by the time I present them with the task to write an entire companion book, the bulk of their writing is already done. 

I have them capture some written thoughts as they read a text (be it a whole-class novel, literature circle book, or independent choice book), but I never collect or grade this writing. I call it their “Deep Thoughts Notebook,” and I typically use Notice & Note signposts or other prompts that can work with any text to elicit deep thinking about reading—not just surface-level summaries. 

It’s downright fun when I task students with writing an entire book (cue tween outrage) and then tell them the good news that they’ve pretty much already written it. Each entry in their notebooks could easily become an interesting chapter in a companion book, and they’ve already quoted, cited, and elaborated on their unique thoughts about the text.

Infinite possibilities

Companion books are versatile and easily adaptable. The simplest way to incorporate collaborative companion books into the ELA classroom is with a whole-class novel. (My students have written companion books titled Inside The Outsiders , To Kill a Mockingbird: A Companion , and Everyone’s Monster: A Guide to A Monster Calls ).  

However, I do very few whole-class novel studies and have still used companion books to suit many ELA endeavors in lieu of the formal, traditional literary analysis essay. Companion books work with literature circles, short stories, author studies, and more. This year, I even had two seventh-grade ultra-fans of the Wings of Fire books write their own companion guide to this series, which they read independently throughout the year; they’d never been more motivated or productive readers and writers. 

What’s more, companion books don’t need to be collaborative. Individual students can work throughout the year on their book as a long-term project. 

Final tip for success

Be sure to clarify that the purpose of a companion book is not to simply summarize the original text. The content of companion books should look much more like a formal literary analysis than a book report. To engender the depth and quality of writing comparable to that of a literary analysis essay, provide examples of companion books, and have students determine how they are similar to and different from other forms of writing. 

Students should be able to readily observe that companion books do very little summarizing and instead function much like analysis—they cite and elaborate on direct quotes from the text that are highly relevant to the particular focus of the chapter, and they are bookended by a formal introduction and conclusion, to name just several features. 

I like to help students embrace the specific purpose and audience of companion books by explaining what I call the “ Easter egg effect.” I tell them: “Your readers don’t need you to tell them the basics of the text—they already know the main characters and setting and plot. But what did you notice, and think they probably missed? A true analysis reveals something through detailed examination. What’s your hot take? What Easter eggs will your writing reveal?” 

This framing focuses both their reading of the text and their writing about it.

The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and Heinemann are proud to announce the release of four additional book-length Units of Study, each addressing an especially key topic from the If…Then… titles in the Units of Study series. These four books were written out of the tremendous feedback from teachers on their power. They are designed to help teachers dig deeper into these topics and to provide the instruction necessary to build stronger readers and writers in their classrooms. For Reading Units of Studies: Word Detectives: Strategies for Teaching High Frequency Words and for Decoding , Grade 1 By Elizabeth Franco and Havilah Jespersen Mystery: Foundational Skills in Disguise , Grade 3 By Brooke Geller and Alissa Reicherter with Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project For Writing Units of Studies: The How-To Guide for Nonfiction Writing, Grade 2 By Valerie Geschwind and Jennifer DeSutter with Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Literary Essay: Opening Texts and Seeing More , Grade 5 By Katie Clements and Mike Ochs These new book-length units have been written to fit tongue and groove into the original Units of Study, yet each can also work as a self-contained stand-alone unit, offering you a chance to try on the experience of teaching the Units before moving to the complete series. These units will also come with anchor charts, Post-its for planning, trade packs, and online resource supports. To help you plan where to fit these new units into your yearlong plan, feel free to download our suggested calendar of units for 2016-2017. Click here to download the document: https://drive.google.com/a/readingandwritingproject.com/file/d/0B404rJALRaGwU0lGeXh0RHQ2Xzg/view To get a closer look and to order your copies, please click here: http://www.heinemann.com/ unitsofstudy/ifthen/

Home » Resources » Common Core » Curriculum

MAISA ELA Common Core-aligned units of study were piloted and reviewed by teachers statewide. This multi-year project resulted in K-12 curriculum resources that are aligned to many of the state standards and organized across grade levels. These units are not scripts but are guidelines for teachers; we encourage educators to adapt them for their population and context, and supplement them with additional resources targeting areas of learning not represented within.

NOTE: These units of study do not represent a complete, comprehensive curriculum for English Language Arts. Users will need to supplement for English Language Arts standards not represented within, such as Foundational Skills K-5 and others across the grade levels.

Click on a grade level below to expand the accordian table and see links to specific units of study.

Ela common core-aligned units, kindergarten units, frequently asked questions about the units.

Launching the Reading Workshop

Emergent Story Books

Readers Read Pattern Books

Readers Use Strategies to Read

Informational Reading

Readers Get To Know Characters

Oral Language: Building a Talking Community

Launching the Writing Workshop

Label and List in a Content Area

Pattern Books

Growing as Small Moment Writers

Opinion Letter

Writing a Sequence of Instructions: How-To Books

Informational Writing Personal Expertise

First Grade Units

Readers Use Strategies to Solve Words

Readers Learn From Informational Reading

Character Study

Building a Repertoire of Strategies Mixed Genre

Series Reading: Re-enacting Character Clubs

Apprenticeship Writing: Studying Craft

Opinion Writing: Letters for Social Action

Informational Books: Personal Expertise

Writing Like a Scientist: Investigation Notebooks

Second Grade Units

Readers Learn from Informational Reading

Series Reading Cross Genre Book Clubs

Informational Book Clubs

Reading Fiction and Traditional Literature

Launching with Small Moments

Lifting Level Narrative Writing: Studying Craft

Opinion: Using the Power of Reviews

Informational Writing: Personal Expertise

Realistic Fiction

Shared Research & Informational Writing: Descriptive Reports

Third Grade Units

Launching Strong Reading Habits

Understanding Characters

Mixed Genre Series Clubs

Informational Research Clubs

Launching with True Stories

Persuasive Essay

Writing Literary Essay

Poetry: Discovering the Voice Inside Your Heart

Informational Research Writing

Fourth Grade Units

Launching Strong Reading Habits

Analyzing Characters

Interpretive/Analytic Reading

Historical Fiction

Informational Reading Research

Launching with Realistic Fiction Stories

Persuasive Writing

Literary Non-fiction Personal Expertise

Building and Writing Personal Poetry Anthologies

Fifth Grade Units

Readers Read with Power

Interpreting Characters

Interpretive and Analytic Reading

Historical Fiction Book Clubs

Launching with Personal Narrative Stories

Literary Non-Fiction: Extending Writing

Memoir: Writing and Reflecting on Life

Sixth Grade Units

Launching the Reader’s/Writer’s Notebook and Independent Reading

Informational Reading and Writing

Literature Reading and Analysis

Argument Reading and Writing

Seventh Grade Units

Launching the Reader’s/ Writer’s Notebook and Independent Reading

Eighth Grade Units

Ninth grade units.

Independent Reading

Narrative Reading

Literary Essay

Basics of Argumentation

Reading Nonfiction

Informational Essay

Argument Writing Genres

Tenth Grade Units

Eleventh grade units.

Writing the Argument

Twelfth Grade Units

Interdisciplinary units.

• a unit overview
• scope and sequence
• five lessons from each subject area
• additional unit resources
• sample student work
• links to the Oakland Schools Teaching Research Writing site

What Does it Take to Survive Civil War?  – ELA and social studies (middle school)

What’s Eating You?: the Industrialization of Food – ELA, science, history (high school)

World War II: Barbarism & Conflict – ELA & history (high school)

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New Resources to Support and Extend Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study

Now that the Units of Study for Teaching Reading and Writing have become essential parts of daily life in tens of thousands of classrooms around the world, Lucy Calkins and her coauthors have begun identifying ways they can be even more helpful to teachers and students. Based on all they’ve learned working with teachers implementing Units in their classrooms, Lucy and her colleagues are hard at work on a number of important resources to support and extend the Units of Study.

You can be among the first to know complete details on new Units of Study resources as they are developed. Simply click on the link at the bottom of this page to register for updates.

What’s Coming:

Classroom Libraries – Ideal for Units of Study for Teaching Reading; Great for All Classrooms

• Lucy is leading a team of experts to develop state-of-the art classroom libraries. Two libraries are planned for each grade level—one on-grade-level and one below-grade-level.
• Each grade-level library will include lots of high-interest books—as many as 600 per library.
• A set of supporting resources will help teachers use and organize their libraries.

New and Adapted Units of Study

Lucy and her TCRWP coauthors are developing Add-On Units to address specific, common “If. . . Then. . .” scenarios. Titles currently in development:

• Word Detectives unit for first grade reading
• Literary Essay unit for fifth grade writing
• Mystery unit for third grade reading
• Information Writing unit for second grade writing

In addition, Lucy’s team is preparing detailed guidelines for adapting social studies units to focus on other content (e.g. adapting gr. 5 Westward Expansion unit to focus on Immigration .)

Support for ELs

• Spanish translations of selected components for both reading and writing units are in the works, including student self-assessments and classroom materials such as anchor charts and other charts, teacher writing exemplars, and more.
• Lucy’s team is also developing a list of Spanish-language mentor text suggestions.

Writing Anchor Chart Post-Its

• New Anchor Chart Post-It Notes for the Units of Study for Teaching Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing are currently in development.

Topics: Units of Study , Lucy Calkins , TCRWP , Teachers College Reading and Writing Project , Units of Study for Teaching Reading

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Units, Tools, and Methods for Teaching Reading and Writing

A workshop curriculum - grades k-8, by lucy calkins and colleagues from tcrwp.

Dear Teachers, I couldn't be more delighted to be sharing this work with you. It is the understatement of a lifetime to say that Units of Study grow out of years of work in thousands of classrooms. This series also grows out of the greatest minds and most beautiful teaching that I've seen anywhere. To write the Units of Study, we have done what teachers throughout the world do all the time. We've taken all that we know—the processes, sequences, continua, books, levels, lessons, methods, principles, strategies…the works—and we've made a path for children, a path that draws all we know into a cohesive, organic progression. Our hope is that this path brings children along to the place where they can write clearly and skillfully and read flexibly and joyfully—and can live together as caring, thoughtful readers and writers. Lucy Calkins

Now Available!

Brand new nonfiction Jump Rope Readers to complement the beloved fiction decodables and help students build and practice phonics skills. Learn More

New Units of Study in Writing, Grades 3-5!

New units release this summer. They have a sequential standards-based curriculum in grammar, opportunities to tap the power of digital technologies, far more discipline-based writing, and a compendium of tools to support responsive small-group instruction. Learn More and Pre-order Now!

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Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing without TradePack (2016), Grade 4

Without trade pack.

By Lucy Calkins , Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University , M. Colleen Cruz , Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University , Kelly Boland Hohne , Cory Gillette , Anna Cockerille , Kathleen Tolan , Alexandra Marron

Fourth graders are on the verge of writing more academic texts. They begin the year writing realistic fiction and learn to develop rich characters and stories. The units then bring students step-by-step toward increasing proficiency with these genres: thesis-driven persuasive essays in unit 2, historical research reports in unit 3, and writing about fiction in literary essays in the final unit. 

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List Price: $434.07

Web/School Price: $325.55

Please note that all discounts and final pricing will be displayed on the Review Order page before you submit your order

PART OF THE SERIES

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About the Grade 4 Units

Written for children on the cusp of writing more academic texts, the fourth-grade units familiarizes students with the genres they will regularly encounter throughout school—thesis-driven persuasive essays, literary essays, and research reports. Each of the units begins where children are and then provides a progression of instruction that brings students step by step toward increasing proficiency. In Unit 1, The Arc of Story: Writing Realistic Fiction , students learn that the lenses they bring to reading fiction can also be brought to writing fiction, as they develop believable characters with struggles and motivations and rich stories to tell. This unit is followed by Boxes and Bullets: Personal and Persuasive Essays in which students learn the value of organization and form as they gather evidence to support and express an opinion on topics they know well. By Unit 3, Bringing History to Life , students are ready to tackle historical research in which they collect evidence and use details to vividly describe people and events long ago and far away. Unit 4, The Literary Essay: Writing About Fiction , brings the series full circle as students build on their learning of essay writing and apply it with increasing sophistication to a unit on literary essays—that is, writing about fiction.

About the Series

Lucy Calkins and her colleagues have drawn on their work from more than three decades to develop a state-of-the-art curriculum in writing to:

• help you teach opinion, information, and narrative writing with increasing complexity
• foster high-level thinking, including regular chances to synthesize, analyze, and critique
• develop and refine strategies for content-area writing
• support greater independence and fluency
• conduct strategic performance assessments to help monitor students’ progress and differentiate instruction
• provide a ladder of exemplar texts that model writing progressions across grades.

(click any section below to continue reading)

Purchase Recommendations and Options

Purchase Recommendation:  Choose the  Grade 4 Units of Study with Trade Book Pack  if your library does not already include the 4 mentor texts referenced in the Units. If you do not need the trade book pack, purchase the  Grade 4 Units of Study without Trade Book Pack  (as shown here).

Save  when you purchase related cost-saving bundles, with or without trade book packs:

• Elementary Series Bundle (K-5)  (with trade book packs)
• Elementary Series Bundle (K-5)  (without trade book packs)
• Middle School Series Bundle (6-8)

Select the  Grade-Level Units  you need most, available both with and without the trade book packs:

With trade book packs:   Kindergarten  /  Grade 1  /  Grade 2  /  Grade 3  /  Grade 4  /  Grade 5

Without trade book packs:   Kindergarten  /  Grade 1  /  Grade 2  /  Grade 3  /  Grade 4  /  Grade 5  /  Grade 6  /  Grade 7  /  Grade 8

To learn more about the  Units of Study in Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing  series, visit  UnitsofStudy.com

Four Units of Study

• organized around the three types of writing mandated by the Common Core: opinion, information, and narrative writing
• lay out 4-5 weeks of instruction (16-18 sessions) in each unit
• include all of the teaching points, minilessons, conferences, and small-group work needed to teach a comprehensive workshop curriculum
• model Lucy and her colleagues’ carefully crafted teaching moves and language

A Guide to the Writing Workshop, Intermediate Grades

• crystallizes the essential principles, methods, and structures of effective writing workshop instruction (The  Guide , now available for separate purchase, can be an essential manual for principals, curriculum coordinators, coaches, and others who are supporting implementation of  Units of Study —or for anyone wanting to learn more about writing workshop).

If… Then… Curriculum

• offers additional units of study
• presents if/then conferring scenarios that support targeted instruction and differentiation

Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions

• organized around a grades K-5 learning progression across opinion/argument, information, and narrative writing
• includes performance assessments, student checklists, rubrics, and leveled writing exemplars
• also available in a K–8 edition for  separate purchase : ideal for principals, curriculum coordinators, coaches, and other who are supporting teachers as they implement Units of Study

Large-Format Anchor Chart Sticky Notes

• Large-format preprinted Anchor-Chart Sticky Notes with illustrated teaching points help teachers create and evolve anchor charts across each unit

Online Resources

• Video Orientations
• Spanish translations of important student and teacher resources—includes Spanish translations of writing samples to use with Writing Pathways, student checklists, Anchor Chart Sticky Notes, and numerous other classroom materials such as daily charts and folders. Also available are lists of Spanish-language mentor texts
• Downloadable and printable files for the anchor charts, figures, student exemplars, homework assignments, and checklists in every session
• Digital files for resources provided in Writing Pathways, including Writing Progressions, On-Demand Writing Prompts, Rubrics, and Student Writing Samples 
• Download a Grade-level Sampler
• Download a Series Overview

Companion Resources

• Fireflies  by Julie Brinkloe
• Pecan Pie Baby  by Jacqueline Woodson
• Revolutionary War  (Cornerstones of Freedom series) by Josh Gregory
• Fox  by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks
• View Now! Units of Study for Teaching Writing  Video Orientations , Grades K-8
• Download a  Study Guide

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