The prompt you assign shapes every essay you will grade, which makes it one of the most important decisions in a Peer Gynt unit. A vague prompt such as "discuss the themes of the play" invites rambling summaries that are difficult to compare and tedious to score. A focused prompt about identity gives students a defined question to argue and gives you a clear standard for judging their answers.

Identity is the natural center of this play because Peer spends five acts trying on selves. He is a village boaster, a bridegroom thief, a troll prince, a prophet, a trader, and an old man searching for proof that he ever existed as one person. Students at the high school level can follow this progression without needing advanced theory, and the shifting costumes give them concrete evidence to organize around.

Good prompts also protect students from a common trap, which is treating Peer as a simple cautionary tale. When the question asks them to weigh competing claims, such as whether Peer ever truly acts as himself, they must read closely and take a position. That produces essays with real arguments, and real arguments are far easier to evaluate than collections of observations.

What Makes an Identity Prompt Work

A strong prompt names a specific problem, points toward the text, and leaves room for disagreement. Asking whether the Troll King's motto of being enough for oneself is a fair description of Peer's character requires students to define the phrase, compare it with the human motto of being true, and test both against the plot. That sequence of tasks mirrors the skills you are trying to assess.

• To what extent does Peer ever act as a consistent self, and what does the play suggest about why not?
• How does the Troll King's idea of selfhood differ from the human ideal Peer is raised on?
• What does the onion scene reveal about Peer's search for a core identity?
• Is Solveig's faithfulness a fair measure of who Peer really is?
• How does the Button Moulder's warning change the way we read Peer's earlier choices?

Matching Prompts to Student Levels

Ninth and tenth graders often do best with prompts that focus on one scene or one symbol, since they are still building the habit of connecting quotation to claim. Eleventh and twelfth graders in an AP or honors setting can handle prompts that ask for comparison across acts or engagement with competing interpretations. Scaling the prompt to the group keeps the grading focused on the skills you actually taught.

Consider offering a choice among two or three prompts rather than a single question. Choice gives students ownership and tends to improve effort, while the shared focus on identity keeps the essays similar enough to grade against one rubric. It also reduces the temptation to borrow work, since classmates are not all answering the same question.

Setting Up Grading Before Students Write

Decide in advance what a strong response to each prompt would include. For the onion scene prompt, a top essay might explain how Peer's peeling reveals layers with no center, connect that image to the Boyg and the trolls, and consider whether the discovery is tragic or darkly comic. Writing those expectations down helps you recognize quality quickly when you are reading the thirtieth paper.

Sharing a trimmed version of these expectations with students pays off as well. When they know that engaging with a counterargument will be rewarded, more of them attempt it, and the overall quality of the set rises. Clear prompts and clear criteria work together to make grading less of a guessing game for everyone involved.

Using Feedback to Improve the Next Prompt

After grading, look at where students struggled. If many essays summarized rather than argued, the prompt may have been too open, and a tighter question next year will help. If most students avoided a particular act, perhaps because it feels remote, you might add a prompt that brings Egypt or the sea voyage into focus.

AI feedback tools can speed up this reflection by showing common weaknesses across the class set. Seeing that a large share of papers lacked a clear thesis, for example, tells you exactly where to place the next mini-lesson. Over several cycles, your prompts, rubrics, and lessons become a tightly connected system that makes teaching Peer Gynt more effective each year.