Pedagogical Practice 3: Easy steps to literary analysis

My Gender and Literature students don't write traditional essays for my class. We practice close reading, we talk about themes, we analyze in class discussions, and they can choose to do a final paper, but most choose unessays instead.

All that being said, understanding the steps for literary analysis is still important. In one of my past classes I had students work through the steps of an essay (wrote introduction, sample body paragraph with integrated sources, Works Cited page) without writing the whole essay since I wanted them to learn the process.
Thinking of this, as we finished Between the World and Me, I wanted to walk my students through literary analysis, so this was what I gave them:

Steps in literary analysis

• What do you have to say about the topic?
• What evidence supports your stance/analysis?
• What key scholars have written about this?
• Do you agree or disagree with their scholarship?
• Use sources to support YOUR stance, don’t just summarize
• Sandwich:
• Thesis
• Textual evidence
• Citation
• Explain how evidence shows thesis
• Color coding ensures you do everything you’re supposed to
• Introduction: roadmap to argument, outline, mention all the sub-topics
• Body paragraphs: parts of analysis
• Close reading
• Theme
• Other big ideas
• Conclusion: now that you’ve done all this micro work take a step back. What is the big picture? What have you learned? Why is it important?
• Works Cited

I particularly like the color coding, and when I HAVE had students turn in papers, I have them keep it. It helps me see where misunderstandings may happen, they think they explained their evidence, but they just restated it. Their thesis is just a description. It also helps them as they draft, to see during revision if they've missed anything.

I also always suggest they write their introductions last, and that I should know the outline of the paper when I finish reading it. 

I make sure too to tell them that this is not the ONLY way to write a literary analysis, but it's a way I like, and that once you have something you like, you can riff off of it.