Where the Red Fern Grows Literary Analysis Resource

We have developed this package to assess your students understanding of the story. This package should be used once the students have completed reading this book. This packet can be used as a “Performance Task” or “Performance Assessment” as it contains “Essential Questions” that your students must answer in writing to assess their understanding of the story. Some questions will ask students to apply what they learned in their written responses. Some questions are response to literature questions. If your students type their writing, the packet can be used as a “rough draft” to use prior to their typed response.

This package contains the following components:

1. Ten “Essential Questions” to assess student understanding of the story (summative assessment). These questions are designed for you to “pick and choose” which ones you’d like to use for your students. You can differentiate instruction by assigning one type of question to some students and another type to another subset of students.

2. Graphic Organizers that may aid your students in their brainstorming or planning stages of their writing.

3. CLOZE (fill in the blank) assessment of vocabulary words in the story (Context Clues)

4. A Crossword Puzzle to assess the understanding of the definitions of vocabulary words in the story.

We have used these “Essential Questions” responses on bulletin boards to keep current writing in the classroom.