Example Analysis of A Christmas Carol

In student voice, year 11s expressed that a weakness of theirs was analysis of key quotations for ‘A Christmas Carol’.

I put a quotation on the board that lent itself to analysis. We annotated this as a class really picking apart language and writer’s methods. The students were amazed at how much we could write about one quotation. We had great discussions about what questions we could use this quotation for, what other quotations we could link this to, Dickens’ intentions etc. We repeated this again with another key quotation with a more student-led approach.

A question that these two quotations had in common was: Scrooge’s attitude to money. Therefore, I wrote this on the board and asked students to turn one of their annotated quotations into an analytical paragraph. I did the same for the first key quotation.

Then, I shared my analytical paragraph and explained my structure and thought process. Students then made edits to their paragraphs but most were successful in achieving a developed analytical paragraph.

This resource is the model section of an essay with the key quotations analysed.