Making Sense of Figurative Language

Figurative language can be very difficult for children to grasp. Imagine a child (or an English language learner) looking at you in horror after being told to “break a leg” before a performance!

Here’s a resource I created to give students a fun way to interpret these puzzling expressions. Each sheet features a sentence that includes an idiom, which is highlighted in all capital letters. Students must illustrate both the literal meaning of each sentence (“What It Says”) and the figurative meaning of each sentence (“What It Really Means”).

The sentences have been designed to enable students to use context clues to determine the meaning of each idiom, so they should be able to complete the tasks even if they have never heard an expression before.

A reference sheet is included in the resource.

I make it clear to the students that I am not grading their artistic skills (I’m no artist myself. I can only draw stick figures!), but their comprehension/context clues skills.

Their final products were displayed on our bulletin board!

There is a reference sheet with the definition and an example of an idiom included in the set. This sheet can be shrunk to fit in students’ interactive notebooks or enlarged as a poster for your reference wall.

an interpretation by one of my 5th graders!

The set includes 25 worksheets so there may be enough for each of your students to have a different idiom. If you have more than 25 students, you can distribute the same idiom to more than one student. It would be interesting to see different interpretations of the same sentence!

Another option is to pair students to work on the same idiom. They may decide to combine their ideas or one student can illustrate the literal meaning and the other can illustrate the figurative meaning. However you structure the lesson, it will be so much fun to see their creativity on display!

Charlene 🏠