About this activity
Sixteen items that do two things: name the device — The stadium roared is personification; He runs like his shoes are on fire is a simile — and then explain the meaning, as in what is the speaker saying with My heart's a battlefield, or why did the writer choose clawed for the wind. The design is deliberate: labelling alone is not comprehension, and a student can pass a labelling test without understanding a line.
How to use it in a session
Do the labelling items and the meaning items in pairs, so the same line gets named and explained. The simile-metaphor distinction is the one students find easiest and the least useful; the meaning questions are where the work is. The clawed question — why did the writer choose that word — is the most valuable item on the board, because it moves from identifying a device to reasoning about a choice.
What to listen for
Watch for correct labels with wrong meanings. A student who identifies My heart's a battlefield as a metaphor and then says the speaker lives near a battlefield has the terminology and none of the comprehension, which is exactly what this board is built to expose. Notice whether the student can explain in their own words rather than restating the line.
Carrying it home
Figurative language is in every conversation. When someone says they are starving or freezing, asking what they literally mean is a two-second exchange that makes the whole category visible.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Seventh through twelfth, covering the range where figurative language is assessed.
- Do I need to sign in?
- No, all sixteen items play free.
- Why not just teach the four terms?
- Because the terms are the easy part. A student can label a simile perfectly and still not know what the comparison is saying, and it is the meaning that determines whether they understand what they read.