Screencast Lecture Bundle | How to Write an Essay | Literary Devices | Prosody

#1: How to Write an Essay Video Lecture with 4 Supporting Documents

I created this video screencast on how to write an essay for my students. I cover the structure of the essay:

• introduction
• thesis statement
• topic/supporting sentences
• interpretation of evidence
• conclusion

I included simple, easy to follow documents (1 page each) that I review in the video:

• a writer's checklist
• a comment bank
• how to quote
• an overview of the structure of the essay with examples that interpret The Catcher in the Rye

I talk about essays in general and not just the analysis of literature. I also address topics like creativity, logic (line of reasoning), interpreting quotes and literary devices, and the writing process.

#2 Literary Devices and Techniques PowerPoint Video Lecture

I created this PowerPoint video for my students to explain the 21 most commonly used literary techniques and devices, including:

simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, personification, pathetic fallacy, apostrophe, synesthesia, oxymoron, symbol, allegory, sensory imagery, repetition, tension, juxtaposition, irony, parallel structure, allusion, paradox, mood/tone.

Each slide contains a definition and I also use examples that I created on my own about teaching English. This serves as a model lesson and can be used to get an understanding of how to simplify and explain complex literary techniques.

I included my product "19 Literary Devices in 2 Poems: Presentation and Activities", a PowerPoint with definitions and examples from two poems.

#3 Poetry PowerPoint Video: Prosody, Scansion, Rhythm, and Rhyme

This 45-minute PowerPoint video contains a lecture of me speaking during each slide about how to scan a line of poetry and identify the stressed and unstressed syllables. I also attached a one-page reference sheet with essential terms (class handout) and the PowerPoint without the videos. I use Alfred Corn's system of 1s (weaker), 2s (intermediate) , and 3s (stronger) to make it easier for students who might be on the fence about whether a syllable gets a stress or not. I'll cover iambs, trochees, dactyls, anapests, and spondees, and monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octometer, catalectic, and hypercatalectic. I also cover other terms used specifically in poetry, like the different stanza types (couplet, tercet, quatrain, etc.), weak and strong rhymes, internal rhyme, interliner internal rhyme, off (near, slant) rhyme, alliteration (head rhyme), assonance, consonance, euphony, cacophony, refrain, caesura, enjambment, and onomatopoeia.