"Freedom Summer" Rating: 5 of 5
"Love" Rating: 5 of 5
"John Henry" Rating: 4.5 of 5
Overview
Happy new year (a few weeks late)! For all those teachers and students out there, welcome to a new semester.
This month, my 5th grade students have been focusing on identifying figurative language in literature. Accordingly, I've been on the hunt for high-quality books that model different varieties of figurative language to support their study. And, as always, I've been trying to select books that simultaneously represent diverse populations. This post is dedicated to three new favorites for teaching figurative language! All three not only gave my students the opportunity to practice identifying figurative language, but also enraptured them with their stories. In this post, I not only examine the figurative devices employed within each text, but I also explore the impact each can potentially have on a diverse audience of students. I arrange these texts as a mini-unit, in the order that I taught them. I recommend teaching them in the order listed:
Day 1: Similes in "Freedom Summer"
Day 2: Metaphors and Similes in "Love"
Day 3: Personification, Metaphors, and Similes in "John Henry"
A Brief Introduction to the Texts
Day 1: "Freedom Summer" by Deborah Wiles
- takes place during the Civil Rights Movement, just as anti-segregation laws are being passed— in particular, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- follows the story of two boys— one African American and one white— who are best friends, and traces their friendship prior to the Civil Rights Act and immediately after its passing.
- debunks the widely-accepted myth that the Civil Rights Act was the end of segregation. The boys learn the hard way that passing a law doesn't immediately change people's hearts. The boys' realization provides a gateway for discussion on modern-day manifestations of racism and the hard work it takes to truly be rid of unjust practices like segregation.
- provides a number of examples of simile. As I was reading the book aloud, I had my students stomp their feet any time they heard an example of simile. I also periodically called on students to explain what given similes in the text meant.
Day 2: "Love" by Matt de la Peña
- metaphorically describes the various manifestations of love people experience— the beautiful, the heartbreaking, the exhilarating.
- contains compelling illustrations by award-winning Loren Long. These illustrations depict children from racially diverse families, who live in a variety of economic circumstances yet share the universal feeling of love in their day-to-day experiences.
- explores themes of gratitude by revealing that the feeling of love is not always accompanied by joy. It demonstrates how loss and longing, though bitter, are also tokens of love.
- contains countless examples of metaphor, as well as a few examples of simile. With my students, I built on the previous day's lesson by having them continue to stomp their feet for every simile and by having them snap their fingers for metaphors. This was a way for me to formatively assess whether they could recognize the difference between metaphors and similes.
Day 3: "John Henry" by Julius Lester
- tells the story of folk hero John Henry, a former slave who, after the Civil War, worked constructing the Big Bend Tunnel, which entailed hammering— by hand— a hole through the Appalachian Mountains. Though it has not been confirmed whether John Henry was a real person, the folk tale is a way of honoring the thousands of African Americans that did work on the construction of the tunnel and many of whom did die in the process.
- won a Caldecott Honor for the watercolor illustrations done by Jerry Pinkney.
- contains myriad examples of personification, metaphor, and simile. The book is so packed with figurative language that it could easily be read and digested over two days, which is what I did with my students! As done in the previous days, I had them stomp for similes and snap for metaphors; in addition, they tapped their pencils for every example of personification. They were pretty much making noise for the entirety of the book!
*As an aside, many of my students were ecstatic to discover the youtube clip below about John Henry, taken from Disney's film American Legends.
Supplementary Reading for More Figurative Language
1) "Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen
2) "Uptown" by Bryan Collier
3) "Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold
References
de la Peña, Matt, and Loren Long. love. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, NY, 2018.
Lester, Julius, and Jerry Pinkney. John Henry. Puffin Books, New York, 1999.
Wiles, Deborah, and Jerome Lagarrigue. Freedom Summer. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York, 2001.
I love the idea of using multicultural lit in order to talk about so many things in one given lesson. I can tell how much extra work this is for you as a teacher to have to think specifically about what book to pick, and even go to the library in order to get a physical copy. Specifically, I really liked the book John Henry that you talked about. Having read this book before I can definitely see where all of the learning can happen for figurative language. I also like how students were then able to expand their learning into a new format, such as the video.
Thank you for sharing and writing about this for us. Wonderful ideas…
I love how you used children's literature to give examples of figurative language in your classroom and as a formative assessment. Your choices on books to read really killed two birds with one stone by showing them multicultural literature teaching about the Civil War and Civil Rights Act of 1964 while also providing your students with in-text examples of similes, metaphors, and personification. Your three-step approach with each book building off of what they learned from the last is great and I hope to use this technique in my future classrooms. I believe it will help students remember what they learned on previous days as well as introducing new, more challenging ideas.
@eltonl and @lacyky, I'm happy to hear this post was of use to you! As you continue your teaching work, please feel free to share any multicultural/ figurative language texts that stand out to you. Best wishes for your teaching journeys!
The use of multicultural literature in this instance is an excellent collaboration between utilizing the often-required need to teach literary elements, but also ensuring that students are learning about cultures and experiences beyond their own, OR cultures they would otherwise never learn about. This 3-step program of books is an excellent way to accomplish this, and I will definitely utilize such a technique in my future classroom.
Before reading this I can honestly say that I have never thought to use children's literature to showcase figurative language before and I absolutely love that idea! I think for kids to not only see them being used and how they are used in an actual story context rather then just an example on a worksheet, while being able to enjoy a story is such a brilliant thought. Not only that, but finding stories that are multicultural and will show students so much more then just figurative language is such a great idea to incorporate multiple important things into a lesson. It's just like killing two birds with one stone!