Christmas break can't get here soon enough and figurative language?!

It’s that time of year - that pre-winter break tired time of year. I don’t know about ya’ll, but these past couple of weeks with students have WORN ME OUT! Maybe it’s all the extra things we have to do in and out of the classroom (door decorating anyone? Christmas shopping for school, family and friends?) It could be the fact that I’ve been working on TDA (text dependent analysis or literary essays) with students. (expect a whole other post on that soon! I’m determined to master teaching and for my students to master writing TDAs!) 

   

  I still want to make sure that I’m giving students meaningful content that is standards-based and will help them grow as readers. Enter a recent post on Edutopia I stumbled across that gave recommendations for students struggling with reading comprehension. One of the recommendations of the post was to teach students explicitly the skills they need (no surprise there), but what stood out as a part of that recommendation that was a bit surprising to me was one of the suggested skills - figurative language. 

     For some reason, I’ve always thought of figurative language as more of a “fluff” type activity, but as I reflected on it more, it started to make sense to me. I think sometimes, as a literate native English speaking adult, I take certain things that I understand for granted - one of those being figurative language. I forgot that yes, kids need to be explicitly taught figurative language. 

     This realization prompted two memories for me. One being one of my ESOL students from many years ago who was confusing the terms “green thumb” and “Golden rule” and was trying to explain a “Golden thumb” to me. Or to dial it waaayyyy back - like 1985 way back -when I was in fifth grade and my mother said “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” I was confused and excited, envisioning the wish bone we would break, and dreaming up what I might wish for. However, I was also a bit confused, because I couldn’t recall us having had turkey any time recently, so it left me perplexed as to where this bone was coming from. (side note - our family had a Thanksgiving tradition of two people being able to pull apart the “wish bone” from the turkey and then person with the center piece of the bone got to make a wish. You can read more about that here) 

     “Wow! How did I get so lucky? And it’s not even Thanksgiving!” I thought to myself - only to my dismay to discover that the bone she was picking with me, was not a wish bone, but rather a litany of my recent 10 year old wrong doings. 

     My current mental state, this recent reading and my memories prompted me to create a Christmas themed figurative language packet, which I fully intend to lean into with my fifth grade students in the coming days! I think they may be a little tired of hearing me talk, and quite frankly, I may need a little break from talking :) Enter - the figurative language This or That task cards, and the figurative language game cards. I’m planning on using the game cards in small groups to have the kids practice identifying figurative language as they play memory match, and also as they play go fish with the cards. I’ve got to add a little fun back in, as my recent TDA exploits maaaayyy have sucked a lot of fun from the classroom despite my best efforts otherwise. What are your plans for the next few school days? Comment below to let me know your sanity savers! And if you’re interested, click on the link below to head to my TpT store and grab my Christmas/Winter Themed figurative language packet!