How to Engage Students When Teaching Analytical Writing

My students used to breeze through short stories just so they could move on. Then I introduced BJ Novak’s bizarre, hilarious short stories—and suddenly, they were asking to read more.

That’s when I realized the most accessible texts can also spark the deepest thinking.

Why Start With Short Stories?

When I first started teaching the basics of writing to high school freshman, I used what I was trained with: a unit of short stories that was accessible for students to read and analyze, followed by explicit paragraph writing lessons.

The short stories I began teaching with were solid, and they included meaningful themes for high school freshman:

• We would pre-assess with "Just Lather, That's All" by Hernando Téllez
  • This is a fun and interesting story, but as the years went on, I discovered middle school teachers were teaching it
• And then we would read
  • "The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant"
  • "The Rock Pile" by James Baldwin
  • and "The Red Candle" from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Ultimately, reading each story would guide students to focus on characterization and symbolism, and we would weave writing instruction into our work with the texts by practicing with:

1. Drawing inferences based on evidence (quotations)
2. Crafting claims in response to prompts
3. Choosing evidence to pair with claims
4. Developing reasoning (explaining HOW evidence shows/supports a claim)
5. Developing analysis (picking apart the language of the text/evidence in our reasoning)

While these lessons ultimately worked, the unit felt random and disjointed from our year. While all of the stories connected to adolescence and coming of age and the stories represented diverse experiences, having the unit culminate in an analytical paragraph about one of the stories didn't really make the meaningful connections stick for students.

The writing also felt a bit outdated to students. And since I was usually teaching the basics of the analytical paragraph early in the year... this was prime time to build connections and engage my students!

So eventually, I switched things up. While I can now teach the analytical paragraph and essay alongside texts like Of Mice and Men and The House on Mango Street, I had a lot of fun starting the year with short stories selected from BJ Novak's One More Thing.

Why BJ Novak Works for Engaging Content with MS/HS ELA Students

While the US version of The Office came out when I was in high school, it has remained somewhat popular with my students.

via GIPHY

The Office is funny and recognizable, and while some or many of the episodes might make me feel wildly uncomfortable to watch alongside students when I'm supposed to be the adult responsible for them in a classroom, at the same time, finding the right episode and the right lesson (what is satire and parody? how does it work? how do you create it?) makes it appropriate and accessible in the classroom.

BJ Novak wrote three episodes in season one of The Office, and played Ryan Howard. So, students can recognize him from his work on the show, and his satire and sarcastic tone in many (if not all) of his stories in One More Thing offer an engaging, yet accessible challenge for students to work with.

Teaching the Basics of the Analytical Paragraph

While I eventually moved on to scaffolding lessons so that students could quickly write about tone in their analytical paragraphs with regards to Novak's work, when I need to keep it simple,

Novak's stories are still great because they're funny, or weird, and SHORT!

The first story of the collection, "The Rematch," is a retelling of the famous fable, "The Tortoise and The Hare." While it is five single sided standard book pages, that comes out to a little more than one double sided photocopy. When students see the story handout and begin reading Novak's hyperbolic language, it's a quick and accessible hook with a spin on a story that many students already know well.

Sneaking in Scaffolding for Writing Instruction

I almost always offer my students reading questions, though I know it's a careful balance of wanting them to enjoy the reading, or to not always rely on finding the answers to questions. Sometimes I require them, sometimes I offer them, but make them optional.

For "The Rematch," I include required reading questions, since it's usually early in the year and their responses serve as formative assessments for me to see where my students are at for a variety of skills. The other benefit is that I can scaffold in steps towards analysis and writing instruction.

In an activation question, where I ask students to reflect on the fable of "the tortoise and the hare," I ask them to practice with characterization:

By answering this question, students are:

• activating prior knowledge
• practicing with naming characteristics (listing adjectives)
• laying a foundation for two characters that Novak is going to subvert, which should surprise/engage them

In a close reading question, I also scaffold in drawing inferences and finding evidence to support those inferences:

By answering this question, students are:

• reviewing/using the ELA grammar / vocab term "subject"
• making inferences by naming traits about a character
• finding evidence to support inferences and claims

And it's these inferences with evidence to support them that students will put together and explain in an analytical paragraph later.

Teaching Paragraph Organization Structure

Depending on where my students are at with regards to what their previous teachers have taught them about analytical writing, if they already have a general sense of what to include in a paragraph, then I can shift to review mode.

That typically looks like having the students meet in small groups to discuss what they read on their own in "The Rematch." As part of their small group work, I will have them craft an analytical paragraph that characterizes either the tortoise or the hare, and then they can compare their group paragraphs against models, or "mentor texts," that also pair with fill-in-the-blank notes about analytical paragraphs.

I include three models of point-evidence-analysis mini paragraphs (what many call C-E-Rs) to showcase the three different ways students can integrate quotations into their writing using MLA format. The first example includes space for students to note the organization and structure that typically...

1. introduces a claim
2. incorporates evidence
3. articulates reasoning that explains how the evidence supports the claim

I also include a fill in the blank section where students define:

• claim
• quotation integration
• evidence
• reasoning

While these kinds of notes can feel tedious and boring, it's still important to make sure students understand or can point back to common definitions of these commonly used terms in English class. While the goal is for students to understand these terms in action in their own writing, as ELA teachers we use these words all the time, and if our students don't understand what we're referring to, then we aren't able to discuss their writing and how to improve it.

If I need to really teach the basics step by step, I will slow down and isolate each of these pieces for students:

Teaching Reasoning and Analysis in Writing Instruction

After I've explicitly taught students about the structure and organization of the paragraph, and they're familiar with the necessary terms (again - claim, evidence, reasoning, analysis), I slowly release responsibility and support day by day.

Asking students to go off and write an entire paragraph on their own from scratch can feel daunting, since their writing is a reflection of their critical thinking and craft abilities,

so I typically start by giving them a claim and evidence to work with, and ask them to practice writing their reasoning and analysis for a pair.

Notice how I already had students do this in small groups after having them gather claims and evidence about character traits for the tortoise and the hare for homework. I then also had them work together to discuss and articulate their analysis and reasoning.

For my BJ Novak unit, I typically move on to the next story, "The Girl Who Gave Great Advice," which is even shorter than "The Rematch," (one photocopied page, single sided! Just two standard book-sized pages)... and even more bewildering.

Once again, I require reading questions for the students. These reading questions – surprise, surprise – include scaffolding for analytical thinking and writing.

In "The Girl Who Gave Great Advice," Novak uses irony to create a sarcastic tone. This can be really hard to break down and write about, but sarcasm is something that students are naturally good at, and irony is one of those terms that we know will come up in English class over and over again, so this is a meaningful challenge and lesson with a very short and accessible text.

While students practice with close reading on their own, once again, they'll come together in small groups to discuss the story itself (and hopefully have a little fun with that).

And then we will talk explicitly about, mood, tone, and irony before I guide students to practice explaining it in writing.

After we explicitly talk about mood, tone, and irony, I'll shift students to a practice tone paragraph for "The Girl Who Gave Great Advice".

The complex thinking task for this assignment is articulating the reasoning, which is essentially...

1. explaining the irony in the story AND
2. how it suggests Novak's sarcastic tone.

Pulling it altogether is a very complex thinking task, so you'll notice that I provide them with nearly all of the building blocks (claim, evidence, and bullet points of reasoning). This takes the pressure off of students to find it themselves, and allows them to just practice putting the entire paragraph together with their own style. They can still pick and choose which evidence makes the most sense and in what order they'll talk about it, which is plenty to work with in the early stages of practicing with analysis.

After students craft their own practice paragraphs, I'll then show them mentor texts for "meets expectations" and "exceeds expectations" paragraphs, so they can compare with their own writing to see how they did.

If the tone paragraph is too challenging for students, I can skip it altogether, or I can have students read the story and instead ask them to characterize the girl and write an analytical paragraph that characterizes the girl (claim = character trait, evidence to support, and reasoning to explain the connection).

Gradually Releasing Responsibility in Writing Instruction

I typically like to give students the challenge of explaining tone in writing with the Girl Who Gave Great Advice paragraph, because then it feels much easier for them to explain symbolism in "All You Have to Do," which is also a very short story from One More Thing (again, 2 standard book-sized pages, and one side of a photocopy). But if you have students craft characterization paragraphs instead of tone paragraphs with "The Girl Who Gave Great Advice," then you'll be increasing the complexity of their thinking task by asking them to explain the symbolism of the red shirt in "All You Have to Do".

I also like to pair "All You Have to Do" with "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Bookstore," (another 1 pager) since it's short, sweet, and gives opportunity to talk about what the girl symbolizes, and Novak's use of irony, mood, or tone.

Additional Practice and Paragraph Writing Assessment

At this point, I like to give students a practice analytical paragraph for homework before they move on to prepare for an in-class analytical paragraph that's a summative assessment of what they've learned. At this point, students will have read four Novak short stories and should have a solid understanding of his voice and style, which is consistently sarcastic and satirical. But to make sure students can work with symbolism and characterization, I offer them a practice paragraph with the story, "I Never Want to Walk on the Moon," which is about 2 standard book-sized pages, but fits onto one photocopy page double sided.

I'll offer students reading questions to support their preparation, too, but they're on their own (using available pre-writing, which includes sentence starters and frames for thesis statements and graphic organizers for planning) to craft their analytical practice paragraph.

Once students have completed their practice paragraphs, there are a few options for review:

• peer editing/grading with the rubric
• workshopping in small groups, then with me
• volunteers to share their work with the whole class, and I facilitate a full class workshop

You can really take your pick of what you think your students need, or stretch this across a session or two if they need more time and practice.

When I teach the Novak short stories, I'm typically going for high engagement, explicit instruction, and a swift pace, so that I don't lose student engagement. But for classes that are ready to dig even deeper into literary analysis, I like to teach the analytical paragraph and analysis with The House on Mango Street, because there's so much symbolism and accessible figurative language to work with that the practice paragraphs and writing have allowed me to create mentor texts and models that look like this:

Summative Analytical Paragraph Assessment

Once my students feel confident with knowing what they need to improve in their practice paragraphs, we move on to the final analytical paragraph assessment.

This assignment mirrors the structure, prewriting, and graphic organizers offered in the practice paragraph, as well as the scaffolded steps throughout our reading of BJ Novak's short stories and small group work that guides us through characterization and analysis of style and tone.

Want to teach Analytical Writing with High Engagement Short Stories?

Grab the full unit bundle from my shop:

Complete Novak Short Stories Close Reading, Literary Analysis & Analytical Writing Instruction ELA Unit | (Grades 8-10)

A ready-to-teach, 2–3 week sequence that takes students from baseline writing → high-engagement close reading → scaffolded practice → formative & summative analytical writing. Built around short, funny, and incisive stories from B.J. Novak’s One More Thing, this bundle gives you the pacing, slides, printables, Google Docs, and rubrics—so you can focus on teaching.

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