When teaching students about metaphor, simile, and personification, I try to encourage them to incorporate these descriptive tools into their own writing, not just to identify them in a poem. This takes constant reminding and reinforcing, as it’s not something that most students do naturally until they become more confident and proficient writers.
Below is a beginner set of make-a-metaphor task cards and a graphic organizer for students to practice distinguishing between the three literary devices, as well as identifying the tone of each one. I remind students that accurately identifying a literary device is not much help, unless they can also infer the tone that the writer is attempting to convey. This is what makes writing truly effective. The third task is to use the mentor sentences, or sentence frames, to create their own version of the literary device while conveying the tone identified.
These task cards can be used as an application activity in pairs or groups; as a timed activity during a stations rotation; or ask exit tickets (without the graphic organizer).
