Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Ida Mae Jones is very close with her family and has a unique relationship with each one of them.

• How do Ida Mae’s relationships and closeness with her family impact her choices throughout the novel? (topic sentence)
• Provide 2-3 examples of decisions Ida Mae made based on the relationship she has with a member of her family. How did the author reveal that motivation to readers?
• In your concluding sentences, describe what these relationships reveal about Ida Mae’s character.

2. Ida Mae and many of the characters are pilots, and sometimes their language makes symbolic use of the environment they most often find themselves in: the clouds and the sky.

• What does the sky symbolize in this novel? (topic sentence)
• When and where does the author use language about the sky or the clouds? Provide several examples from the text and summarize the scene where the symbol is used.