Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie
This unit on Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is designed to focus on close reading and literary analysis skills. The materials offer a highly scaffolded approach that instruct student how to infer understanding and develop interpretations in response to literary choices made in the work. The activities strike a balance between closely examining short passages and thinking about how the writer’s use of broad authorial choices such as character relationships, setting, and narrative perspective work to develop ideas and issues in the work.
The resources in this unit include:
- A unit specific Activity Portfolio with a range of activities
- Reading Comprehension Questions (short answer)
- Multiple Choice Questions, organized by section
- A Passage Assessment
- An Essay Assessment
- Annotated Assessment Passages
Teaching Resources (PDF)
Teaching Resources (Word)
A Note about the Resources
The activities and formative assessments divide the novel into six sections:
- Section 1: pages 1-36
- Section 2: pages 37-109
- Section 3: pages 110-161
- Section 4: pages 162-205
- Section 5: pages 206-253
- Section 6: pages 254-307
The passages in the “Purple Hibiscus Activity Portfolio” and the “Passage Assessment” include the first and last lines of the passage in addition to the page number from which they were extracted. For copyright reasons, the bulk of the passage has been removed, however the page numbers are standard in the editions, also matching the Kindle version of the novel.
The “Multiple Choice Questions” are part of a personal ongoing action research project to assess the role of objective formative assessment in developing students’ reading skills. These are intended to be used as a formative assessment to allow students to get immediate feedback on their reading skills and their knowledge and understanding of the work.
For the written assessments, rubrics are not included in the materials. A rubric that assesses close reading skills, such as the IB Paper 1 or the AP Lit FRQ2 rubric, is suggested for the Passage Assessment. A rubric that assesses more holistic understanding, interpretation, and appreciation of a literary work, such as the IB HL Essay or the Paper 2 rubrics are suggested for the Essay Assessment, but these would need to be adapted to account for a single text analysis in response to a question.