Truth be told, I think I am a much better orator than I am a writer. Maybe it is dude all of the talk to texting I do on my phone. But if you read through this and it seems more conversational than if it were written by somebody typing, that is because I’m using the microphone to complete this with Google Docs and the Voice typing. The problem with that is, that have to say words like, and. And enter and when I just said function, it tried to create a function instead of just using the word function so I had to change from function to nothing.
Anyway, moving forward…
I’m going to be completely honest here. Teaching figurative language in middle school is probably my least favorite thing to discuss. And I know there are teachers who would drop their jaws and go how could you possibly say that? The reason is, for me, figurative language is the absolute most subjective part of English that we teach. And so disgusting in teaching meaning comma because we’re really talking about philosophy and meaning and deeper thinking and so forth when we teach this, is difficult, especially when I am working in Title 1 schools, because the experiences I have had in my lifetime to help me better understand what the author Maybe insinuating or referring to in a piece of figurative language is not going to be anywhere close to what a 12 year old student who has never left the county can get from the same piece of text.
so how do we best address figurative language with middle school kids?
I think that it is imperative that the kids have a solid grasp on understanding all of the literary devices used in figurative language in and of themselves before they even look at a paragraph or a poem. So instead of teaching figurative language as a whole language to start, personally I believe that we need to almost, for lack of a better term, drill those literary devices so the students know what they are before they are asked to identify them and their meaning when we combined several to create something like a poem.
I’ve taught Middle School English for several years, and when I was scouring the internet, I was always looking for lessons on what turned out to be literary devices. That is because the popular thing is to teach whole language lessons. But the problem with that, in my opinion, is that the students that I was teaching and I have taught in several States both in title and non title schools, they did not have the solid foundation or the depth of understanding of literary devices
When I first started putting lessons up online, they were based individually on literary devices. The reason for that was because I could not find any lessons myself that addressed specific literary devices in depth. Most of the lessons, well all of the lessons I found on a bunch of other websites, which are great websites by the way, but they would take a story and create a lesson surrounding a story where there may be a primary focus of study but it was not as deep as I would like to have gone with my students to ensure that they had a solid grasp on the literary device before moving on and focusing or studying an additional item.
When I was in Middle School English in the early nineties, we still had to diagram sentences and we don’t do anything like that anymore. And I understand the change, but I do see an issue with the fact that we have students who are graduating high school who still can not right effectively either in forms of fictional or nonfiction writing.
Our students deserve more from us than brushing over the foundational pieces of our language, literary devices, they deserve to have a solid in depth Foundation that would allow them to read any story end apply those foundational skills and improve comprehension and application.
Some might say that the skills of learning these literary devices really are more for Lake Elementary ages, something like 3rd 4th and 5th grades. That may be true, but the challenge I have is that when I am sitting down and working with a group of 6th grade or even 7th or 8th grade students, time and time again they may have a slight idea about the literary concept and what were discussing but by that time if they have studied it for several years, they should absolutely no.
One year, when I was teaching English as a second language, we were preparing for the state annual assessment and studying a previously released test item – a poem.It was a typical poem, probably four five stanzas with around 5 to 7 lines per stanza. I don’t think there was much rhyming in it but what I do remember reading through it was that with the figurative language included in the poem, I recall that in one line with my students who ASL level 3 comma witches the last stage of ESL before going into General English classes only, they were maybe 8 words and that line and the only word to my students knew was the article “the.”
We had already spent about 30 minutes going over the first part of the poem and we are on the 3rd or 4th stanza When We Came Upon This line that they did not understand most the vocabulary for. Or at least they did not understand the vocabulary in this figurative context. And when they left, I just sat down and I stared at it and I thought how in the world can we expect these students to take and pass this assessment when they can’t identify these basic concepts?
So, case in point, We have developed an entire section on this site addressing the most commonly used literary devices, with stories that were written specifically to study those devices. The teaching method is the gradual release of responsibility, so each literary device lesson has 4 stories. First, the teacher gets to read and think out loud to model for the students how they understand the literary device and its place within the text. II the class gets to work together to do the same thing clarifying enquiries and making sure there is a consensus and understanding period third it is time for the students to work in small groups or pairs to show that they can identify the literary devices in different pieces of writing. Finally, it is the opportunity for the individual student to practice and show that they can identify the literary device in a piece of writing.
