Section 5: Overview

Culminating Task

We will review what we have learned from our study of The Great Gatsby and demonstrate our understanding by writing a literary analysis essay. To find models for our own writing, we will study how literary critics develop their analyses. We will take a position in response to a literary analysis question, develop claims, gather evidence that supports our analysis, then draft, revise, peer edit, and edit our Culminating Task essays. Finally, we will publish our essays, reflect on our accomplishments, and discuss how to extend our learning based on what we have studied, experienced, and discovered in this unit.

• Lesson 1:

  We will prepare to write a literary analysis that takes a critical position on the novel and defends it using evidence from the novel and other texts from the unit. We will read and unpack the Culminating Task questions. To think about what taking an interpretive position and writing a literary analysis entails, we will review the four essays we have previously studied.

• Lesson 2:

  We will think about how analytical claims are built from textual evidence and how writers then support their claims with evidence. We will analyze claims and their explanations from Donaldson’s essay “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely.”

• Lesson 3:

  We will analyze how one writer has built an evidence-based paragraph to support his claims, and we will develop a claim-based paragraph to express, explain, and support our position.

• Lesson 4:

  We will expand from the claim-based paragraph we have written to develop a draft of our literary analysis, either through free-writing, building on claims and evidence we have identified, or extending writing we have done within previous lessons and Section Diagnostics.

• Lesson 5:

  We will continue drafting our Culminating Task literary analysis essay and continue our writing workshop-style mini-conferences with our teacher. We will give and receive peer feedback about our thesis, claims, arguments, quotes, and evidence.

• Lesson 6:

  We will work on introductions and conclusions for our literary analysis essays.

• Lesson 7:

  We will review, revise, and edit our Culminating Task literary analysis essays, focusing on our use of verbs as well as correct punctuation and citation of quotations. We will make final edits to formatting so we can publish and submit our essays to fulfill the expectations of the Culminating Task.

• Lesson 8:

  We will finish the unit by engaging in a written self-reflection and then a whole-class discussion of The Great Gatsby. We will reflect on what we have learned and what we found challenging or easy in the unit. We will think about possible research avenues for the Application Unit.

• Lesson 9:

  In a culminating activity, we share the knowledge we have gained and the connections we have made by reading our independent reading texts.