ASSESSMENT AND SUPPORT

Linking analysis to big ideas

Assessment Criteria and What A Good One Looks Like

Below you will find the Skill Check assessment criteria for this skill, and underneath you will find an example of what a good one looks like, with a brief explanation of how it fits the criteria.

Assessment Criteria for Linking analysis to big ideas

minus
any of these things

It’s not the analysis part of the paragraph (e.g. repeats evidence, etc)

Only writes about what the quotation tells us about the characters/plot – doesn’t go outside the text into big ideas

equals (just) to plus (secure)
all of these things

Is the analysis part of a PEA paragraph and explains the evidence adequately and appropriately

Analysis goes outside of the text and connects to big ideas – even in a small way

star
all of these things

All the + criteria

Provides some thoughtful, interesting or detailed links to big ideas from the quotation

Links clearly to the point

What a good one looks like

Example task

Read the point and evidence and then complete the task underneath.

In ‘Those Winter Sundays’ Robert Hayden suggests that it is often through their unseen actions that parents show their love. The speaker describes how, even on Sundays, his father would get up early and dress in “the blueblack cold” and light the fires with his “cracked hands” even though “no one ever thanked him.”

Write the analysis to complete this PEA paragraph. You can analyse any aspects of the evidence, including the writers’ methods, if you want, but you must link it to the point and include some discussion of big ideas.

Example response

Here, we see the speaker’s father going above and beyond for his son. Even on Sundays — a day of rest, when people would often lie in — he suffers through the cold to warm the house, without ever expecting gratitude. There is a selflessness to this act which Hayden uses to show the nature of parental love: it is a thankless job, very often, being a parent, with young children especially ungrateful because they lack the perspective and understanding that the speaker of this poem now has, since he is reflecting on his youth in later life. Parents suffer, Hayden suggests, reflected in the “cracked hands” of the father here, for no personal gain because they love their children.

Notes on this response

  • It’s not a particularly long response, but it focusses on the skill being assessed.

  • It could have included more discussion of methods, but for the purposes of this example we kept it to the core things you need for the skill.

  • It begins by discussing the poem itself, and what the evidence shows about the characters in it (the speaker, his father).

  • It then moves from discussing the text to discussing what the text tells us about real people and the real world.

  • The big ideas are discussed in detail over several sentences.

  • The analysis is all links back to the point.