Character analysis is the most common essay assignment for I Am David, and it is also the one most likely to produce plot summaries instead of real thinking. Students know David well by the end of the book, so they tend to retell what happened to him rather than explain what it means. The prompt you choose has a large influence on which kind of essay you receive. A well-designed question pushes students toward interpretation from the very first sentence.

Weak prompts ask students to describe David or tell what he is like, which invites a list of adjectives followed by events. Stronger prompts ask students to take a position, such as arguing whether David's greatest strength is his courage or his caution. Because a position can be defended or challenged, students must select evidence deliberately instead of dumping everything they remember. That single change in wording often raises the quality of an entire class set.

Prompts can also target specific moments where David's character is tested, such as when he first accepts help from someone he does not know. Asking how this moment shifts his understanding of other people directs students to a concrete scene and a clear line of reasoning. It also makes essays easier to compare, since most students will be working with overlapping evidence. That overlap helps you notice which explanations are truly insightful and which are merely repeated.

Prompts That Invite Analysis

A dependable structure for a character prompt combines a trait, a change, and a reason. For example, students might explain how David's relationship with fear changes as he travels and what causes that change. This structure asks for a claim, evidence across the story, and an explanation of cause, which are exactly the skills you want to assess. It also gives students an obvious way to organize the essay into a beginning, middle, and end of his journey.

• How does David's understanding of trust change between the camp and the end of the journey?
• Is David more shaped by what he has lost or by what he has never had?
• What does David's behavior around food and water reveal about his past?
• How do the people David meets challenge what he believes about the world?
• Which single decision best reveals David's true character, and why?

Scoring for Depth of Analysis

When scoring, separate the level of analysis from the amount of detail. An essay may include many accurate events from the book and still earn a low analysis score if it never explains what those events reveal about David. Build a rubric row that distinguishes between describing what happens, explaining what it shows, and evaluating why it matters. Students who reach that third level are usually the ones connecting David's choices to larger ideas about freedom and human kindness.

Look also for whether the student treats David as a developing person rather than a fixed personality. Essays that trace how his behavior changes and identify the moments that cause it tend to show deeper reading than essays that assign him a single trait. You might award the highest analysis scores to responses that acknowledge complexity, such as a boy who is both wary and quietly hopeful. Complexity is a sign the student has read closely.

Giving Feedback That Moves Writing Forward

The most useful feedback on a character essay names exactly where the analysis stopped. If a student writes that David was afraid and quotes a tense scene, a helpful comment might ask what the scene shows about the kind of fear he has learned to live with. That question pushes the student to write one more sentence of reasoning without giving away the answer. Over several essays, students begin asking those questions of themselves.

Avoid comments that simply say explain more, since students often do not know what kind of explanation is expected. Offer a sentence starter or a model example drawn from a different piece of evidence. This shows what analysis looks like without solving the essay for them. The habit takes some effort at first but quickly becomes a comfortable part of your grading routine.

Making Prompts Work Across Classes

If several teachers use I Am David, consider sharing a bank of prompts so that the department can compare results. Different sections may need different levels of scaffolding, but the underlying skills stay the same. A shared prompt bank also makes it easier to onboard a new teacher who has not taught the book before. Over time, the department can retire prompts that produce shallow work and keep the ones that generate real thinking.

When prompts are shared, rubrics should be shared as well so that a score in one classroom means the same thing in another. Tools that apply a consistent rubric across sections can help with this, although teachers should still review results together during a scoring meeting. Even a short conversation about a few sample essays reveals differences in expectations. Those small conversations improve fairness for students more than any policy document.