Know...

• Teachers know that rigorous student writing elevates thinking when students must assert a claim, select purposeful evidence, and write commentary that interprets, connects, and explains significance rather than retells.

Show...

• Teachers show this by planning an ATC-focused writing task from HQIM, writing questions that demand elevated commentary, designing supports for struggling writers and extensions for advanced writers, and practicing feedback that targets thinking so students can revise or transfer the skill in a realistic classroom window.

6-Steps

1. LIST the task verb. What must you do intellectually? (analyze / compare / explain / evaluate)

2. LIST the topic. What idea is in play? (death, memory, honor, language, the living…)

3. LIST the required texts or vehicles (devices / elements). (metaphor, irony, characterization, etc.)

4. REWRITE the prompt as a question you can answer in one sentence.

5. LIST the must-haves. What you list in step 2 & 3 pluse textual evidence in commentary. (ATT, text evidence, commentary, elaboration, embedded, etc.) 

6. ANSWER the question = working thesis. Then choose evidence that actually proves that answer.

Example - Six Step Prompt Analysis: 

(1) Verb, (2) Topic, (3) Vehicle: Elements/Devices, (4) Rewrite, (5) Requirements, and (6) Answer

1. Prompt: Compare how Dickinson and Job (chapters 1–3) each answer the first shock of mortality or loss. Cite each text.

   1. Verb: Compare, answer, cite

   2. Topic: Each speaker’s first answer to the shock of death or loss

   3. Vehicle - Elements/Devices: Tone (courtesy vs. blessing/curse); chronology (ride that still moves vs. birthday Job wants undone); personification of Death

   4. Rewrite: Show how Dickinson’s first move and Job’s first move are alike when loss hits.

   5. Requirements:

      1. Tone

         1. Dickinson: “He kindly stopped for me” / “For His Civility” = courteous, unhurried, not terrified.

         2. Dickinson (shift): “The Dews drew quivering and Chill” = courtesy gives way to cold.

         3. Job: “the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21) = restrained, worshipful.

         4. Job: he “cursed his day” (3:1); “Let the day perish wherein I was born” (3:3) = lament, bitter, undone.

      2. Chronology

         1. Dickinson: “We passed the School… Fields of Gazing Grain… the Setting Sun” = a life still moving in order.

         2. Dickinson: “Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet / Feels shorter than the Day” = time collapses after the grave.

         3. Job: four messengers in sequence, then seven days of silence (2:13), then “After this opened Job his mouth” (3:1) = loss in order, cry delayed.

         4. Job: “Let the day perish wherein I was born” (3:3) = he tries to erase the starting point of time.

      3. Personification

         1. Dickinson: “Death… He kindly stopped for me” = Death as a polite gentleman caller.

         2. Dickinson: “The Carriage held but just Ourselves – / And Immortality” = Immortality as a third passenger.

         3. Dickinson: “He knew no haste” = Death as a driver who will not rush.

         4. Job 1–3: little true personification. The Lord and the Accuser are speakers in the council, not objects turned into people. If you need a stretch: the “wind” that “smote the four corners of the house” (1:19) acts with force, but the stronger craft in Job here is voice and lament, not personification.

   6. Answer: In the poem “Because I could not stop for death,” the author Emily Dickinson utilizes the speaker to answer the shock by yielding to a civil ride while in the poem Job, Job addresses the initial shock by openly displaying his faith.  

Instructions

1. Give students something concrete to write about.

2. Identify one device or element in the text (diction, imagery, irony, contrast, point of view, motif, characterization, metaphor, simile, symbolism, etc. etc.)

3. How it works:

   1. Quote: 

   2. Device: 

   3. Define/Description/Details: 

   4. Effect/Purpose: 

   5. Link to claim: 

Example:

Prompt: Compare how Dickinson and Job (chapters 1–3) each answer the first shock of mortality or loss. Cite each text 

Claim: In the poem “Because I could not stop for death,” the author Emily Dickinson answers the first shock of loss by freezing feeling so the self can survive; meanwhile, in the book of "Job", Job answers it by calling down darkness to unmake the day he was born.

Text 1 — Emily Dickinson, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”

1. Quote: 

   1. “This is the Hour of Lead — / Remembered, if outlived, / As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow — / First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —”

2. Device: 

   1. Extended metaphor + simile (grief as freezing / as lead)

3. Define/Description/Details: 

   1. “Hour of Lead” = heavy, dull, almost metallic time

   2. “Quartz contentment, like a stone” and “Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs” = hard, ceremonial, unfeeling

   3. Sequence is clinical: Chill → Stupor → letting go

   4. The body keeps moving (“Feet, mechanical”) while feeling is shut down

4. Effect/Purpose: 

   1. Dickinson does not show screaming or bargaining. The first shock is answered by a protective shutdown. Feeling is postponed so the person can keep standing.

5. Link to claim: 

   1. Dickinson’s first answer to loss is anesthesia. Survival comes before meaning. The cost is delay: the “letting go” only happens later, if the person outlives the hour.

Text 2 — Job 3:1–10 (after the losses in Job 1–2)

1. Quote: 

   1. “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness; may God above not seek it, nor light shine on it.” (Job 3:3–4)

2. Device: 

   1. Symbolism — darkness stands for the wish that Job’s life had never begun

3. Define/Description/Details: 

   1. Light normally means life, birth, and God’s notice

   2. Job calls for the opposite: darkness, no dawn, no stars, no “joyful shout”

   3. He treats the day of his birth as a thing that can be unmade

   4. This is his first speech after the losses in chapters 1–2 and seven days of silence

4. Effect/Purpose: 

   1. Job does not go numb. He answers the shock by trying to black out the starting point. Darkness is not just mood; it is the tool he uses to erase the day that produced him.

5. Link to claim: 

   1. Job’s first answer to loss is un-creation. Where Dickinson freezes feeling so the person can keep living, Job uses darkness-symbolism to say living was the mistake.