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...

Some of the best practice with shape identification comes from drawing the figures first-hand. Young geometers draw nine two-dimensional shapes: rectangle, circle, square, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, triangle with three equal sides,...

Sometimes words aren't the best way to get information across to the reader. The eighth handout in the 24-part Writing the Paper series describes different type of figures and charts to display complex information in a paper....

Learners illustrate a simile. In this figurative language lesson, second graders are introduced to similes. They read the story Quick as a Cricket and talk about the similes used. Everyone chooses a simile and draws a picture to go along...

Let's get creative! As part of a mid-unit assessment, scholars create a piece of artwork illustrating the theme from Laurence Yep's novel, Dragonwings. Additionally, pupils use a graphic organizer to identify figurative language in...

Explore some of the lesser-known shapes in this matching activity: oval, trapezoid, parallelogram, cross, and hexagon. Learners examine a set of the shapes and match them to a list of names. It may be confusing for some to...

Similes and metaphors make writing more beautiful and detailed, but can be a little harder to decipher during a first reading. Use a passage from The Man Who Loved Words to show young readers how to think through passages that...

Students analyze visual arts by creating drawings in their classroom. In this art analysis lesson, students identify the paintings of Keith Haring by researching the web. Students utilize paper and oil pastels to create paintings...

True! Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" makes readers nervous. But how? Young scholars create a drawing while listening to a reading of Poe's eerie tale to understand how writers create the mood of their stories and what their writing style...

Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorisms are a perfect time capsule of colonist values in the mid-18th century, as well as a clever reminder of the way life still works today. Middle and high schoolers select one aphorism to interpret...

Fourth graders recognize and classify geometric figures. In this geometry lesson, 4th graders read the books Shape Up and The Greedy Triangle and prepare a short report on the shapes mentioned in the text. Students compare the...

You're as cute as a bug. But are you really as cute as a bug? Bugs aren't cute! Idioms are fun nonliteral phrases that mean something different than the words they contain. Second graders learn about idioms as they read the book, More...

Where is the vertex? Each of these three-dimensional figures is drawn so learners can see all sides and corners. They examine an example before trying six on their own. Some of these will be tricky, so be sure kids have covered this...

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...

How is a sphere like a prism? Learners compare and contrast 3-D shapes, first drawing each in the boxes provided. If this is too advanced, supply pre-cut images of the shapes for students to choose from and glue onto the worksheet. A...

Middle schoolers analyze the speaker's ideas and tone in the Billy Collins poem "The Lanyard." After identifying how each of the five senses is addressed in the poem, they compare images to draw conclusions about the speaker and his...

Students discover visual arts by creating sculptures in class. In this personal expression lesson, students research the Internet and examine different examples of modern sculptures and 3 dimensional art. Students utilize paper stock,...

Middle schoolers discover the cultural history of Egypt by illustrating Egyptian figures.  In this art history lesson, students analyze the Egyptian styles of figure drawings and emulate that by creating their own illustrations...

In this finding area worksheet, learners solve the area of an irregular figure by reading and performing step by step operations. Students complete fourteen steps to solve and summarize finding the area.

What do a pair of stinky socks and a toy hamster have in common? The third lesson plan in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl uses silly objects to teach about figurative language. Zany pranks and role play...

In this drawing constellations worksheet, students observe a constellation in the left box and copy the constellation in the right box. Students draw 3 constellations.

In this measuring activity, students use a centimeter ruler to measure the perimeter of 3 figures. They then draw 4 shapes in the grid on the page.

Young writers read excerpts from Gary Paulsen's memoir to identify figurative and literal language that contain sensory details. They determine which selections are examples of sensory language and fi the language is used literally or...

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...