In this video segment from Nature, crabs face numerous obstacles in their migration from their forest home to the Caribbean Sea.

The Figurative Language Terms worksheet was created for the CESA #1 EL OER Project. Having a deep understanding of figurative language is essential while acquiring the English language. For many EL students, understanding the different terms is overwhelming. This worksheet provides students with the opportunity to watch videos and listen to songs to increase their background knowledge of various figurative language terms. Students will have exposure to: simile, metaphor, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, alliteration, idiom, allusion, and personification. They will also have an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the terms by writing definitions, drawing labeled pictures, and/or creating individual examples.

"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes is a classic favorite-a poem that tells a good story with powerful imagery and a rhythmic cadence reminiscent of horses' hooves. The story tells of the highwayman's visit to see the beautiful Bess at the old inn (probably the Spaniard's Inn on Hampstead Heath) and of the terrible fate they both meet. The mysterious ending of the poem suggests that the lovers' spirits still linger on the edge of the heath. Their haunting story certainly remains alive in the words of Alfred Noyes. Look for the musical version of the poem by Lorena McKennitt on The Book of Secrets CD and use this resource to highlight the following literary devices: alliteration, metaphor, personification, simile, and new vocabulary.

This lesson is used as a quick review of metaphors and similes. It uses a YouTube video of common song lyrics paired with the lines from the songs on the paper. Students are to explain the meaning of the metaphor/simile. 

""Reading Poetry" has several aims: primarily, to increase the ways you can become more engaged and curious readers of poetry; to increase your confidence as writers thinking about literary texts; and to provide you with the language for literary description. The course is not designed as a historical survey course but rather as an introductory approach to poetry from various directions -- as public or private utterances; as arranged imaginative shapes; and as psychological worlds, for example. One perspective offered is that poetry offers intellectual, moral and linguistic pleasures as well as difficulties to our private lives as readers and to our public lives as writers. Expect to hear and read poems aloud and to memorize lines; the class format will be group discussion, occasional lecture."

This video segment from A Walk Through Harlem features the poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes.

The goal of this activity is for students to develop visual literacy. They learn how images are manipulated for a powerful effect and how a photograph can make the invisible (pollutants that form acid rain) visible (through the damage they cause). The specific objective is to write captions for photographs.

This resource can be used to teach figurative language. It includes simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, personification, alliteration, and idioms. A definition and several examples are included.