Maxime Houde's La Voix sur la montagne is a classic-style detective novel set in 1940s Montreal, and it gives teachers a lot to work with. A private detective is hired to recover a valuable necklace stolen from a bad-tempered elderly woman in Outremont, and the case slowly widens into a story about family, class, and loyalty. Because the plot is easy to follow, students often write essays that only retell events. Good prompts are what turn that retelling into analysis.

A weak prompt asks students what happens in the novel, which invites a summary that takes ten minutes to write and tells you almost nothing about their reading skills. A stronger prompt asks them to take a position, such as whether Coveleski succeeds because of method or because of luck. That small change forces students to choose evidence, weigh it, and explain why it supports their claim. The best prompts also name a specific scene or relationship so that students cannot lean on generic statements.

Prompts should also match the level of the class. The novel is listed for readers from about fourteen and up, so it suits secondary students who are building confidence in literary writing. A grade nine group might handle a prompt about how the author builds suspicion around the domestic staff, while an older group can compare how different family members react to the detective's presence. Writing the prompt with a clear audience in mind keeps the marking consistent and fair.

Prompts that ask for a position

Argument-based prompts work well because the novel is full of characters who could reasonably be suspected. Asking whether the investigation of the domestic staff at the start is fair or lazy gives students a real debate to enter. They must find moments where Coveleski's assumptions are tested, then explain what those moments reveal about his character and about the society he works in. Students who write well here tend to quote briefly and comment at length, which is exactly the habit teachers want.

• Is Coveleski a methodical detective or a reluctant one? Defend your view with three moments from the text.
• How does the novel use the Dufresne family to comment on wealth and loyalty?
• Which character does the author make the most difficult to read, and why?
• How does the setting of 1940s Montreal shape the way the investigation unfolds?
• Does the author play fair with the reader when it comes to clues? Support your answer.

Prompts that focus on craft

Some prompts should ask how the author builds the story rather than what the story contains. Students can examine how the narrative creates suspense after the attack on the mountain, or how the death of an informant changes the pace and stakes of the book. These questions encourage attention to structure, rhythm, and word choice. They also prepare students for the kind of close reading that later literature courses expect.

Craft prompts need a short checklist so that students know what counts as evidence. A teacher might require at least one reference to a scene transition, one reference to dialogue, and one reference to a descriptive passage. That structure keeps students from writing vague claims about suspense without pointing to a single sentence. It also makes the essays easier to compare when you sit down to mark a full class set.

Making prompts easier to grade

A prompt is only as useful as the rubric that sits behind it. If the prompt asks for a position on Coveleski's methods, the rubric should reward a clear claim, relevant quotations, and explanation that connects the two. When the criteria are written in plain language, students understand what to aim for and teachers spend less time explaining low scores later.

Teachers who use an AI grading tool such as GraideMind can load that same rubric and generate draft feedback against it, which keeps comments tied to the stated criteria rather than to a general impression. The teacher still reviews the output and adjusts anything that misses the nuance of a student's argument. This works best when the prompt and rubric were designed together from the beginning.

Testing a prompt before the unit starts

Before handing a prompt to a class, write a short sample response yourself or ask a colleague to do so. You will quickly see whether the prompt allows for a real thesis or whether it leads straight back to summary. If it takes you more than a few minutes to find three pieces of textual evidence, students will likely struggle as well.

It also helps to collect two or three anonymous student responses from past years and use them to refine the wording. A prompt that produced shallow essays last time can often be fixed by naming a specific chapter or character. Over a few cycles, a department can build a bank of tested prompts for the novel that new teachers can pick up without starting from scratch.