How I teach students to analyze literature: Lesson One

So I don’t jump into this on day one and I might do something creative first, but at some point I want to make sure we have some basics down when we analyze literature. So at some point I make a quadrant on the white board that looks like this:

I then proceed to explain each of the quadrants. We actually act out Plato’s myth of the Cave with students pretending to be fire and the puppet master and the cave people etc… I write a ton of stuff on the board and drop names and theories like mad because I want the students minds to be blown when they start thinking about how many choices, reflections, ideas go into deciding your art’s (writing’s) purpose. This usually takes almost the whole period. Once I get this done I move onto T3 and S.C.O.U.T.

I will talk about T3 and SCOUT next time.