Sean Oros
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
The purpose of this lesson is to provide students a pathway for applying literary analysis skills to modern songs of their own choosing. The rationale for this is twofold: first, it is partially a response to avoiding copied responses from Spark Notes or Lit Notes and the like due to some student’s aversion to literary analysis. Second, and more importantly, it promotes student buy-in of the assignment and retention of the skills literary analysis teaches. This lesson was originally designed for a genre-based first-year college writing course at a four-year institution, but can be easily adapted for any other composition class setting. This assignment has been taught as the second genre of the course, generally weeks 3-6 of the semester, as it is designed to also help develop successful writing process habits. The assignment is built for a 3-week segment, beginning with lessons in poem and short-story analysis for the first week and introduction of the assignment prompt and rubric. In the second and third weeks, students are provided a series of lessons and pre-writing worksheets. These worksheets will guide students through song selection, theme and thesis statement refinement, lyrical citation styles, outlining, and peer review. All worksheets are provided below in the appendices. Ultimately, with teacher guidance, students can develop their analysis skills and build successful writing process habits.