Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Gary Paulsen often uses syntax to convey Brian’s emotions and his sense of how quickly time is moving. Choose one scene where you find the syntax especially effective at doing this and use this scene as the basis for your response.

• How is Paulsen using syntax to show what Brian is thinking and feeling? (topic sentence)
• Give quoted examples that demonstrate patterns in the syntax of this scene. (Think about sentence lengths, parallelism, sentence fragments, and so on.)
• Explain how these patterns create effects that communicate Brian’s thoughts and feelings.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how using syntax to convey Brian’s inner state helps the reader understand larger meanings in the story.