Literary Elements & Evidence
This is the strongest type of evidence because it comes directly from the text.
What is textual evidence?
The words and phrases surrounding an unfamiliar word can help you determine its meaning. This is called using ______ clues.
What are context clues?
The author’s choice of words, including words with strong emotional meanings, is called this.
What is word choice/diction?
The central idea of an informational text is the most important ______ the author wants readers to understand.
hat is the main idea?
In the sentence, “The students completed their projects,” the word students is this part of speech.
What is a noun?
When you explain what a character learns or how a character changes throughout a story, you are analyzing this.
What is character development?
Double Jeopardy
If a character says, “The enormous elephant squeezed through the tiny doorway,” the word “tiny” helps you understand that “enormous” most likely means this.
When an author tells a story from the perspective of one character using “I,” the point of view is this.
What is first person?
A reader should use facts and details from an article to support conclusions. This is known as using this.
What is textual evidence?
In the sentence, “The students quickly completed their projects,” the word quickly modifies the verb and tells how the action happened. It is this.
What is an adverb?
The central message or lesson of a literary text is called this.
What is a theme?
Words such as benevolent, kindhearted, and generous are related in meaning. This relationship between words is called this.
What is a synonym relationship?
An author may place events out of chronological order to create suspense, reveal information gradually, or emphasize an important event. This is an example of this.
What is text structure?
If an article explains that lack of sleep causes difficulty concentrating and then describes how sleep affects the brain, the reader can identify this relationship.
What is cause and effect?
Double Jeopardy
A writer combines short, simple sentences into longer sentences to create variety and improve the flow of writing. This is called varying this.
A reader concludes that a character is becoming more responsible because the character begins admitting mistakes and helping others. This conclusion is an example of this reading skill.
What is making an inference?
A word’s prefix, suffix, and root can provide clues to its meaning. If unpredictable contains the prefix un-, the prefix tells you this.
What is “not” or “opposite of”?
If an informational article explains a problem and then describes several possible solutions, the author is using this organizational structure.
What is problem and solution?
An author claims that school gardens improve student learning. The author provides statistics from several schools to support the claim. Those statistics are examples of this
What is evidence?
A poem describes a storm using words and images, while a video of the same storm uses music, sound effects, and moving images. These differences show how the same content can be presented through different ______.
What are media/formats?
A student says the theme of a story is “People should never give up.” To support this claim, the student should identify specific events and details that do this.
What is support the theme with textual evidence?
The word stubborn can have a negative connotation, while determined can have a more positive connotation even though they can describe similar behavior. This demonstrates the importance of understanding this.
What is connotation?
Two authors can write about the same historical event but emphasize different details or perspectives. A reader should examine this to understand how each author’s presentation differs.
What is the author’s point of view/perspective?
An author claims, “All students should have longer lunch periods,” but provides only personal opinions and no facts or research. A careful reader should question the strength of the author’s ______.
What is evidence/support for the claim?
A student reads a short story and then watches a film adaptation. The film changes the setting and removes an important scene. To analyze the adaptation, the student should compare how these changes affect the original story.
What is analyzing how a different medium interprets or transforms the original text?