Start off analysis of a text with a worksheet that asks pupils to complete several tasks. Class members note down a couple of characters or people and their distinguishing traits, describe the most important event, summarize the text...

Readers analyze an excerpt from Kate DiCamillo's novel Because of Winn-Dixie. They read silently, and then hear it read aloud. Definitions for underlined vocabulary words are in the margin, and other potentially difficult words...

How can you tell if a character is a villain? What about a hero? Work on literary analysis with an engaging language arts worksheet. After completing an activity about the four types of conflict, learners fill out a character map about a...

This handout offers a three-step process for revising sentences for clarity: diagnose, analyze, revise. After reading an example sentence revision with a detailed explanation, learners complete three sample sentences using the three-step...

Introduce literary analysis, writing skills, and purposeful reading with a book review. Pupils answer five questions that ask about plot, characters, language used, story elements, and the main character. This is a wonderful way to start...

Why did they do it? Get to the bottom of complex characters and people by analyzing their motivation. Learners select an action and take a close look at that action in order to infer motive. They then explain why they determined that...

Provide this packet for your pupils as they pour over The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. The study guide includes graphic organziers and comprehension as well as higher-level questions. Class members briefly summarize each chapter, compare...

Analyze a fictional text with a four-page packet that explores a story's main character and moral, challenges scholars to ask and answer questions about the text, and to create a story map. 

After completing the first five chapters of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle By Avi, use direct quotes to make inferences about how Charlotte feels about certain characters. Later, when the novel has concluded, revisit...

A is for. . .? Readers test their recall of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter by filling in the blanks with words missing from a line of text and by identifying characters and events a crossword puzzle based on the novel.

Help your pupils determine just what makes a character or person tick by zooming in on one character or person. This graphic organizer is dedicated to analyzing one person and asks pupils to infer a personality trait, note down an action...

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a play about star-crossed lovers, resonates deeply with teenagers. The study packet contains study questions for each act of the play. Learners use a graphic organizer to analyze whether characters...

Is Phoebe a good friend to Sal or not? After reading chapters twenty-five and twenty-six of Walk Two Moons, class members use the provided graphic organizer to develop an argumentative piece. Writers must decide if the two...

Use a character or person's motivation as the basis for a prediction of that character or person's next action. Pupils select an individual from their reading, copy a quote, write down an inference about that character's motives, and...

Everyone learns and experiences life differently. A set of lessons about character intensities encourages middle and high schoolers to analyze themselves, their peers, and characters from a book based on the five listed intensities:...

In this characterization worksheet, students fill out a graphic organizer chart. Students write the character's name in the center and an example of each of the 4 characterization methods by the author. There are instructions to help.

In this characters learning exercise, learners choose 2 characters to analyze, list the characters similarities and differences in the boxes provided.

So many themes are expertly woven through Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. On the first page, scholars will read five themes, selecting an incident and a quote to highlight that theme. On page two, they use chapters 29-31 to...

Parodies of political figures are the lifeblood of the editorial cartoons in a free press. North Korea's nuclear threat provides young political scientists an opportunity to hone their critical thinking skills as they analyze a...

Celebrate and honor Native American culture with this set of graphic organizers that showcases literature like The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and A Boy Called Slow as well as three other Native American literature books....

Focus on complex characters with a instructional activity from a series that teaches individual skills from the Common Core. Specifically, this resource provides practice with standard RL.9-10.3. Get pupils thinking and talking about...

Sixth graders learn to plan a story by using a story map. They analyze a detailed sample story map and answer 5 questions about it. Then, plan their own story using a story map template.

As the saying goes: there are no new stories. Standard 9 for reading literature in the Common Core addresses this fact and requires that learners be able to analyze how authors use the themes, stories, and characters of earlier works....

After reading Ernest Hemingway's well-known novel The Sun Also Rises, print these study questions for your class. There are 10 questions listed, and some require more than just basic recall. There are compare and contrast questions and...