1. Three Step Analysis Tackle the text at a literal level.
Tackle the text at a literary level.
Combine both to support inferred meaning of the text.

2. General Understandings
Retell the story in order using the words beginning, middle, and end.

3. Literal Details and Plot
How long did it take to go from a hatched egg to a butterfly?
What is one food that gave him a stomachache? What is one food that did not him a stomachache?

4. It took more than 3 weeks. He ate for one week, and then “he stayed inside [his cocoon] for more than two weeks.”

5. Foods that did not give him a stomachache
Foods that gave him a stomachache
Apples
Pears
Plums
Strawberries
Oranges
Green leaf
Chocolate cake
Ice cream
Pickle
Swiss cheese
Salami
Lollipop
Cherry pie
Sausage
Cupcake
watermelon

6. Key Details Search for nuances in meaning
Determine importance of ideas
Find supporting details that support main ideas
Answers who, what, when, where, why, how much, or how many.

7. Who tells the story—the narrator or the caterpillar?
Author’s Purpose
Who tells the story—the narrator or the caterpillar?

8. A narrator tells the story, because he uses the words he and his
A narrator tells the story, because he uses the words he and his. If it was the caterpillar, he would say I and my.

9. Inferences

10. Inferences
Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole.

11. Author’s Purpose Genre: Entertain? Explain? Inform? Persuade?
Point of view: First-person, third-person limited, omniscient, unreliable narrator
Critical Literacy: Who’s story is not represented?

12. Is this a happy story or a sad story? Why???
Larger Meaning?
Is this a happy story or a sad story?
Why???

13. Homework
Find a childhood book and follow the three step method to analyze it.
Literal Level: What “specifically” happens?
Literary Level: Identify literary devices such as Narrative POV, Symbols, Metaphors, Similes, etc.
Purpose: What is the purpose or meaning of the overall text? In what ways do the literal components and literary devices interplay to create a larger meaning (this is not as simple as finding the moral … often the best texts pose important questions rather than didactic answers)?