Students brainstorm independently first, then ask their best friend on the team, or seat partners, depending on the year & student mix, to add to their list of personal characteristics and/or to name three words they think of...

Eighth graders gather ideas generated from other poems and their own inspiration, to create original poetry. A celebration is included as students bind and submit poems for publication.

Eighth graders study personification in published works of poetry, then create their own through the use of diamante or cinquain poetry. They read and discuss poetry by Shel Silverstein, William Jay Smith, and Elinor Wylie.

Eighth graders study poetic devices included in conversation poems and explore their eloquent messages. They read and discuss poems by Langston Hughes and Don Marquis.

In this simile bingo worksheet, students play bingo with words and pictures on it and fill in the blanks to similes with those words. Students play with 4 players.

In this writing learning exercise, students explore and discover a variety of ways to help make writing more interesting and creative.

Students explore the role of resistance during the Holocaust. Viewing images, they complete a set of notes on the Holocaust and discuss the feelings they get from looking at the photographs. They identify the parts of speech used in...

In this pond theme worksheet students research facts on pond life. Students complete comprehension questions, crosswords, word search, and math puzzles. Students write a short report.

Creative! Youngsters listen to the reading of "Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich" by Shel Silverstein as a warm up activity for a lesson in punctuation. They use bread-shaped pages, one for each type of punctuation, to identify which...

Learners listen to the poem "Casey at the Bat". They use their Forecasting Skill to answer questions and discuss the poem.

Students use their knowledge of similes and metaphors to analyze poetry. In this poetry and language instructional activity, students read examples of similes and metaphors and write their own examples that describe their city,...

Students analyze, discuss, and research Georgia O'Keeffe and her flower paintings. They select a flower to paint and create a watercolor painting in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe. Students compose a poem describing their painting.

In this figurative language worksheet, students read and study examples of simile and metaphor. There are 20 questions to be used with Smartboard and 10 questions in which students identify similes or metaphors.

Students investigate different environments by creating a poem. In this prairie environment lesson, students research information about Kansas' natural resources and complete a worksheet about prairies.  Students practice using...

Eighth graders read the novel, "Out of the Dust," and create a free-verse poem about a treasure of their own. They use the attached checklist to evaluate their own poem.

The rain forest alliterations activity has students read about alliterations, then complete 4 alliterations about the rain forest and draw an illustration of one of them. The close with an acrositc poem with the words "rain forest."

Learners reflect on field trips in writing. In this journal writing lesson, students write about a recent experience by using 4 of their senses to tell what they remember. They turn these into poetry. 

Learners review examples of alliteration in Shel Silverstein's poems. They are assigned a letter of the alphabet and then write an original alliterative poem using that letter.

Pupils read the poem The Worker by Richard W. Thomas as an example of the effective use of imagery. Then they complete a 5-senses chart describing some part of nature, e.g. sea, clouds, etc. Then they write their own poem using the words...

Students read poems about Tuberculosis by John Keats. Using the poems, they identify similies, metaphors, personification and imagery. In groups, they make connections about the author's outlook on life and how his disease impacted his...

Students read and analyze the novel "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou. They discuss the poetry and prose of the book, the importance of role models, complete a worksheet, and write a narrative using figurative language.

Students identify figurative language in a proverb and write an interpretation of the proverb prior to reading The Witch of Goingsnake. In this The Witch of Goingsnake lesson, students read a native American proverb and determine whether...

Students find examples of figurative language in "First Rain" in Out of the Dust.  For this Out of the Dust lesson, students takes notes on various type of figurative language and identify examples of each type in the poem.

Students read nursery rhymes and advertisements to identify examples of figurative language. As a class, students discuss the use of figurative language and its effectiveness in advertising, children's books, rhymes, poetry, etc. ...