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 below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Early in the novel, Hannah Nelson defines a school story as “a short novel about kids and stuff that happens mostly at school.”

• In what way does The School Story fit Hannah’s definition? (topic sentence)
• Find evidence from the book to show how The School Story’s settings, characters, and plot fit Hannah’s definition; then find evidence to show how The School Story doesn’t fit into the definition. (You may want to consider characters like Ms. Clayton, Hannah, and Letha, and settings like Mr. Reisman’s office and Shipley Junior Books.)
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, discuss whether the author intended the novel to be a school story based on the evidence you presented.

2. Natalie uses her book as a means of exploring her feelings about her late father.