Literary Lenses Workbook - Critical Theory Reading Activities for Senior English
Build deeper reading and thinking skills with this critical theory workbook for senior English. Students explore texts through six core literary lenses: Feminist, Marxist, Postcolonial, Ecocritical, Reader Response, and Te Ao Māori. Each lens includes short extracts, scaffolded questions, and structured planning support to help students think beyond surface-level meaning.
Sections include clear definitions of key terms, close reading extracts with annotation tasks, and prompts to support comparative and analytical responses. Additional tools include visual reference pages, comparison charts, higher-level thinking activities, and optional extension lenses such as Psychoanalytic and Structuralist theory.
All tasks are designed to support NCEA Level 3 (AS91479) and Scholarship English, with a focus on original thinking, synthesis, and argument-building.
This resource includes:
⭐ A student workbook covering six core and three extension literary lenses
⭐ Short texts with scaffolded reading, annotation, and essay planning tasks
⭐ Visual guides and comparison tools for text synthesis and revision
You and your students will enjoy:
❤️ Clear, accessible theory explanations
❤️ Extracts that build confidence with both familiar and unfamiliar texts
❤️ Scaffolded prompts to help students build analytical arguments
❤️ A structure that supports NCEA and Scholarship critical responses
❤️ Flexible, low prep tasks suitable for classwork, relievers, or extension
Formats:
🖥️ Microsoft PowerPoint, resized to an A4 page. This means your resource:
- Is completely editable.
- Will easily upload to your Google Drive if you prefer the Googley suite.
- Is printable 📃
🖥️ A PDF version of each document.
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Also helpful are these related products:
✅ Psych! Applying psychological studies to literary characters.
✅ Thinkathon! Summaries, conclusions, sytheses, evaluations, judgments
✅ My Lens; Their Lens - perspective/point of view
✅ Thinking Critically About Texts - Senior Text Analysis
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Sharing/Copying this Resource
Feel free to purchase just one for your department - no need for a copy for each teacher. However:
- Please do NOT share with the school down the road.
- Please do NOT take it with you to a new school.
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