In order to assess their mastery of the concepts taught in a 12-lesson plan unit study of Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, Not Buddy, individuals read excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2009 Back-to-School Speech and use the strategies...

In this simile worksheet, students fill in the blanks to similes about themselves. Students complete 6 similes total on this worksheet.

Based on books written by Fred Gwynne, particularly A Little Pigeon Toad, this resource connects the language of idioms and figures of speech with visuals that make explicit the often humorous connections between the literal and...

Reward your class with tasty treats while teaching them about simile and metaphor. After a teacher demo and explanation of simile and metaphor, pupils read books, looking for examples of these literary devices and copying them down....

Students explore an assigned state. In this United States geography instructional activity, students identify facts and figures related to a particular state. Students use the Internet for research and create a PowerPoint presentation...

Bees buzz, dogs dig, lion laze, and snakes slither! Use alliteration to create sentences about four different animals. 

Hook kids into a study on poetry elements by asking them to bring in the lyrics to their favorite song. Discuss the elements in one or two songs (preferably that demonstrate rhyme, figurative language, or a repeating phrase). Groups do...

Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a...

This resource on personification provides three different approaches aimed at different levels. The first, appropriate for upper elementary, provides examples of personification, followed by an exercise that requires replacing a word in...

This teacher-generated word search lists 29 world languages to locate in the puzzle. There is little educational merit to this learning exercise; however, it may improve spelling of some less common languages.

Help your class find their writing voices with this lesson which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher what they...

Ninth graders explore poetic technique and figurative language in this ten lesson unit. Comparisons are made between a variety of forms of poetic expressions and the lives of several poets are studied.

Tenth graders complete a variety of activities related to the first two chapters of the book The Outsiders. They define metaphor, simile, idiom, and hyperbole, and take a vocabulary pre-quiz. In small groups, they write a character...

What do Jeep advertisements and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath have in common? They both employ the art of the extended metaphor! Using the Six-Trait Writing model, learners begin to work on their own extended metaphors. Development...

You'll be a star at your next grade level meeting with an educational unit on Louis Sachar's Holes. Based on both the novel and film, the lessons include applications to language arts with character studies and movie reviews; social...

Seventh graders determine the literal and figurative meanings of idioms and research the history of idioms. In this idioms lesson, 7th graders read two books by Fred Gwynne and select two idioms from the texts to research. Students...

Be as romantic as a poetic. Appear as clever as Einstein. Wow others with your powers of observation by using similes to point out the similar aspects in two different things. This short video focuses on similes found in Shakespeare and...

“. . .different men often see the same subject in different lights. . .” but the great orator Patrick Henry used all the skills at his command to craft a speech to convince listeners to see things as he did--that liberty was worth dying...

Get to know a person in your class or a famous figure in history. With questions about the person's birthplace, parents, and what they are famous for. A space at the bottom prompts writers to list three things they have learned.

Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct their own...

Use folk tales as inspiration for learning about and using personification in creative writing. Learners brainstorm together in order to practice personification before writing their own poems or paragraphs about a household object.

Learn about the interesting life of George Washington Carver and his many accomplishments with this series of worksheets for primary grade learners. From coloring pages and word searches, to non-fiction reading passages and math skills...

This worksheet addresses the issue of language and its barriers within the diverse European Union. Due to the reliance on a resource called, "Europe in the Round", this worksheet may have limited appeal.

Here is an effective way to have your charges practice and model important listening skills. After a short review of effective active listening concepts, such as using body language, summarizing what the other person said, and asking...