5 figurative language teaching strategies for middle school ELA teachers!
If I said it once, I’ve probably said it a thousand times, but I absolutely love teaching figurative language.
Figurative language is so much fun to teach and practice!
When we work on figurative language, we get to talk about how words can be used to invoke more meaning when read figuratively as opposed to when they are read literally.
This is not always the easiest idea for students to understand.
Figurative language also makes words more interesting.
Alliteration can make words feel more poetic or help the names of businesses roll off the tongue more easily.
Similes help us to compare what things are like and how one thing can remind us of another.
Metaphors help us describe things in relation to something else.
And hyperbole allows us to exaggerate over… but in a fun way that allows for more wordplay.
Today, we are going to talk about some specific figurative language teaching strategies and how you can make figurative language more accessible for the students in your middle school classroom.
Strategy #1 | One A Day
By the time your students reach middle school, students have already been exposed to figurative language in a couple of different contexts.
That being said, it is our job as middle school teachers to make sure that students have completely mastered the different types of figurative language by the time they leave our classrooms.
Before we can determine what we need to teach explicitly, we need to figure out where our students are already. One way to do this is to introduce one type of figurative language each day and spend one whole day focusing on that specific type of figurative language.
Use that day to go over the definition of that type of figurative language, provide students with examples, ask them to come up with their own, and even take the time for them to find some examples within a text.
Working through one type of figurative language each day will allow you to assess just how deep each student’s knowledge is on that particular type. It will also provide you with the necessary background information to figure out how much more explicit time your students will need on each type.
In this resource, we have broken down each type of figurative language into definitions, examples, and practice that you can use during this one-day strategy.
Strategy #2 | On-Going Practice
The second of the figurative language teaching strategies we will discuss is all about finding interesting ways to incorporate examples. These moments of ongoing practice will keep figurative language in front of your students’ minds.
A fun way to include ongoing practice within your classroom is to find fun, engaging, and topical figurative language resources that you can build into the weeks before holidays or school breaks.
Since figurative language is something that your students have most likely already learned and practiced, too much explicit instruction is not necessary; however, figurative language practice can easily be done in relation to different themes. That means it’s easy to find resources for different holidays that have a figurative language focus.
In The Sparkly Notebook Store, we have several figurative language resources designed thematically by holiday. These were built to be activities that teachers can use with students during the weeks leading up to or coming out of a holiday or break when students are a little less focused or engaged in their school work.
Check out the resources below to find some that your students will love!
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Strategy #3 | Use Music
Using music to learn about figurative language or to practice finding it can be very lucrative. In other words, you get a lot of bang for your buck here.
As most songs are written like poetry, the amount of figurative language in each song is vast, and students can get a lot of practice in a very short amount of time.
The other benefit of using music is that it engages a different type of audience than if you only focused on figurative language in regard to written texts.
Strategy #4 | Connotation vs Denotation
Another of the figurative language teaching strategies that we use in our resources has to do with focusing on connotation versus denotation in regard to figurative language.
Since what makes figurative language figurative is the fact that it means something more than its obvious denotative definition, taking the time to discuss both the connotative and denotative meaning of a word can help students see how figurative language is being used in an unconventional way.
In many of our standards-based units related to figurative language, we take the time to have the students work with connotation and denotation. This is especially helpful when discussing idioms.
Strategy #5 | Collect Examples
The last of the figurative language teaching strategies that will be discussed today has to do with collecting examples.
Collecting examples of different types of figurative language can be an ongoing activity within your classroom. You may even find that it becomes somewhat of a competition to see how many examples students can find.
Collecting examples of figurative language can look like lots of different things. It could be a bingo sheet. It could look like posters hanging around the room that students write down examples on as they hear or find them in their text. It could be something as simple as having students raise their hands in a certain way anytime they hear a type of figurative language being used in the class.
As a way of making this more purposeful in the classroom environment, teachers might even choose to use certain words in certain ways in order to provide more examples within the classroom environment.
Hopefully, these figurative language teaching strategies will give you some ideas for what you can use in your middle school classroom throughout the year so that your students can master the different types of figurative language before they move on to high school.
To learn even more about how we teach figurative language to each grade level, click on the resources below!
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