This slide show on figures of speech includes definitions, images, and examples from real texts for several common terms: metaphor, simile, personification, alliteration, irony, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and imagery. The presentation is...

Hyperbole, simile, metaphor, and personification are spotlighted on an online/interactive quiz. Test takers read short passages and then identify the figures of speech used.

What a lovely way to incorporate artwork into your language arts lesson. View artwork in illustrated manuscript pages, depicting insects, animals, plants, flowers, and ornate writing in the Getty Museum. Practice using figurative...

Give your learners quick definitions of simile, metaphor, and analogy. As the first slide in this PowerPoint suggests, you can use the presentation as a warm-up and have scholars record the words and their meanings in a Literary Terms...

If used as part of an exploration of figures of speech, this short presentation defining similes, metaphors, and analogies could be used as a review tool in an English classroom. A teacher could augment this resource with more examples...

Get online and explore idioms. Your class will use the Internet to locate, choose, and illustrate their favorite idioms. They make a class PowerPoint with illustrations for their idioms and explain the meaning of each. A great way to...

Are your advanced learners reading authentic Latin this year? Whether you're teaching Caesar, Cicero or Virgil, use some of these strategies to map out your unit. What do you focus on? Consider taking small passages and making that the...

In this current events worksheet, students analyze a political cartoon about the freedom of speech and respond to three short answer questions

Do figures of speech enhance a play or story? In small groups, learners locate and describe figures of speech they find while reading a reader's theater play. After making predictions, they describe how the figures of speech make the...

Scholars use technology to explore poetry and its related elements, such as theme, figures of speech, and other literary devices. They complete four poetry projects including a poem analysis with a concept web, an interactive poem...

Introduce your class to the delights of nonsense poetry and explore literary devices with the writing of Edward Lear. Learners identify rhyme and meter as well as figures of speech, alliteration, and onomatopoeia in "The Owl and the...

Figures of speech, sensory details, and academic language are all targeted while reading Chapter Two of J. Ferris’ Go Free or Die. First, learners engage in an exercise to practice describing with detail. Then, partners use a...

Read and analyze a variety of Shakespearean and contemporary puns using Visual Thesaurus computer software. Middle and high schoolers analyze a pun as a class; in small groups they analyze a Shakespearean pun using contextual clues and...

Lesson five in the series focuses on syntax and the elements that make sentences enjoyable. Learners practice building different clauses and phrases and using figures of speech and rhetorical and literary devices.

Use O. Henry's ubiquitous tale of love and poverty to explore irony. After reading the story, middle schoolers identify examples of all three kinds of irony in the story. With partners, they brainstorm original examples of irony. Then...

Present your class with an overview of poetry-related information. The slides are clearly organized by topic, starting with reading poetry, ending with myths, and touching on everything from the five senses to open and closed forms of...

Examine the changing nature of language in the U.S. View and discuss excerpts from a PBS documentary with your class and then conduct Internet research, and complete a team project on the evolution of teen expressions. 

Compare real events from Mark Twain's life to events in the story. Middle school readers identify point-of-view, its purpose, and its reliability by citing two examples. They describe the tone of the story using four examples and...

Shakespeare was such a talented writer, but why? It must be his use of figurative language, blended with his clever, twisting plots. This worksheet focuses on his use of metaphor, simile, personification, oxymoron, and hyperbole within...

Identify the figure of speech in given sentences. Your seventh grade will write an eight line paragraph using the four figures of speech at lest once. By using narrative, expository or persuasive paragraphs to  complete worksheets...

Your class will find using similes as easy as pie after completing this figurative language exercise. Provided with a list of incomplete similes, young writers must use their creativity to fill in the blanks with nouns that accurately...

Wild feral hogs and an alligator wrestler are just two interesting aspects of Kathi Appelt's novel The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp. Using the novel study, scholars search the text for examples of the eight parts of...

Introduce your young scholars to personification. The literary device is clearly defined and illustrated with clever examples. Opportunities for guided and independent practice using poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes are also...

If you have been analyzing idioms, you can assess your learners' grasp of their figurative meanings with this 10-question matching exercise. Or you could give the sheet to groups to foster discussion about literal versus figurative...