Friday, February 10, 2012

As lovely as ....

Figures of SpeechSimiles ....
How do you teach similies?
What resources do you use?


One evening recently on twitter, this message came to me:


I am currently working with 4 grade and trying to come up with a lesson on similes. Any suggestions??


Since this request came from a future elementary educator, I wanted to find some things to share with her. I began searching through my blog posts, my diigo bookmarks, and some former lessons to see what I could find. That was when it hit me that I talk about twitter being a great place to find resources and ideas, so maybe I should look too!


I sent out a tweet asking for advice and suggestions to share (it is nice to have a PLN to share with and pull from).


Here are a few of the ideas and resources that were shared with me:
  • Snowflake Bently Activity and Idea Webpage which contains a book mark, an art project, information on the illustrator, directions to make a book, and lots of great links
  • Picture book recommendation: My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks (This book is full of similes about the family of the main character) 
  • A great idea for a Color poem on this blog that coul be redone using similes: ThePolkaDotOwl: Poems Anyone? (other great stuff on the rest of the blog too)
  • Someone also shared some powerpoints they have used as an introduction in the past: Similes and Metaphors
  • Laurie posted this as a comment on an earlier blog post: "I used familiar movie characters like Shrek and Fiona and Donkey and Puss in Boots. I had the kids go over adjectives that were nice to describe a person. Then we talked about how to stretch that into similes. Shrek is as green as the grass in June from Shrek is green. And so on."
  • Similes and Metaphors in Pop Culture   (Thanks John Downs)
    Mr. Wasko presents examples of similes and metaphors in pop culture- from Kanye to The Wizard of Oz.


And while I was looking for ideas for teaching similies, I came across this great collection of ideas for teaching figurative language using a Valentine's Day theme on ReadWriteThink!


Do you have any ideas to share about ways you teach similes?


Do you have any resources to suggest?


Thanks in advance

2 comments:

South East Middle School said...

Thanks Melissa, It was actually Ms. Coston, a 6th grade L/A teacher here at SE who showed me those Simile videos--so I have to give her some credit here too :)

Melissa said...

Please tell her thank you from me for sharing the videos!