English & Language Arts Teacher Blog

Hello again, teacher superheroes!
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If your students light up when you mention music but groan when you mention literary analysis, this strategy is for you. The Music + Literature Connections method bridges the gap between what students love and what we want them to learn—helping them see that literature and lyrics aren’t so different after all. 🎶
This strategy invites students to pick a modern song that connects to a theme, character, or mood from a text you’re studying. Then, they justify their choice using textual evidence from both the song and the story. The result? Students begin to see the deeper connections between emotion, motivation, and meaning—and they have fun doing it.
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Hello again, teacher superheroes!
If you’ve ever felt frustrated that students give you surface-level answers (like, “He was crazy. The end.”), you’re not alone. It’s one of the biggest struggles we face in middle and high school ELA: moving students beyond summary into real analysis.
That’s where one of my favorite no-prep strategies comes in: the Somebody Wanted But So Then (SWBST) Method. This simple framework has been a game-changer in my classroom, helping students organize their thoughts, identify character motivation, and dig deeper into conflict and resolution.


How the Somebody Wanted But So Then (SWBST) Method Works
After reading a text, students create a single sentence using this frame:

• Somebody (the main character)
• Wanted (what they were trying to achieve)
• But (the problem or conflict)
• So (what they did)
• Then (how it ended)

Example for The Tell-Tale Heart:
“Somebody (the narrator) wanted to prove his sanity, but he was consumed by guilt, so he confessed to the murder, then was undone by his own conscience.”