ACE Writing Strategy: A Method for Teaching Literary Argument

Assertion- Citation-Explanation Strategy

Recently we posted about using short stories in our classes to teach the various elements of fiction and response to literature analysis strategies. If you’re left wondering just how can you teach a literary argument unit that is engaging and easy to master for your students, let us introduce you to the ACE method of writing literary arguments. 

Literary arguments are a staple in assessing a student’s knowledge of a piece of text as well as their ability to support their inferences with evidence pulled from the text. This is not an easy task for most middle school and high school students. It takes consistency and a lot of practice. Throughout the course of the year, we teach the various elements of fiction to our students. With each new element of fiction taught, we always end our unit with a literary argument performance task. 

While we have had a lot of success with the ACE method when teaching literary argument, we should note that this strategy should be taught explicitly to the class and practiced as a class before having the students try this method on their own. The ACE method has students state their assertion (claim). Next, they support that assertion with citations (evidence) from the text. Last, they explain (provide reasoning) for why/how their evidence supports the claim. It’s like you have an ACE up your sleeve with this method. See what we did there? 

The ACE strategy of writing a literary argument is best used when there are clear expectations from the teacher. We like to pick one element of a narrative to analyze at a time. Students could analyze any element of a novel or short story, including theme, plot, characterization, mood and tone…the possibilities are endless. If you would like a lesson idea, see our short story analysis presentation and companion lessons on The Monkey’s Paw.  This strategy can be taught and practiced as a class, in small groups, in pairs, or you can have students complete a literary argument individually. 

We have a FREE resource for teaching the ACE method of literary argument in our Teacher Pay Teacher store. Check it out and let us know what you think. Is there another strategy you like to use when teaching literary argument? Drop us a comment below, or share on our twitter or instagram pages. We always love hearing from you.

Bottoms up!