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Teaching similes to students requires clear understanding of their purpose and identification. There are two types of similes: cliché and effective. Graphic organizers and games can help identify surface-level similarities. To inspire deeper similes, students can bring familiar items and connect dissimilar objects.
As any child can recite, a simile compares two different things using the terms like or like. This does not mean, however, that the child understands what it means or even that she can identify a similarity in a sentence. Teaching similarities in such a way that their purpose and identification are clear to students can be accomplished using a range of teaching techniques such as games, graphic organizers, and good old-fashioned reading.
Students must understand the purpose of a simile. A truly effective simile is a literary device and as such brings a deeper layer of understanding to something in the text. It might resonate a description, provide insight into a character, or in some other way resonate a poem, story, or line of dialogue. Simply highlighting them when sharing text is an effective way to teach similarities, helping students understand why and how they add meaning.
One important thing that a teacher should emphasize when teaching similarities is that there are really two types. The former are clichés that occur in two ways. A type of cliché-like ones that are so obvious they hardly bear to be repeated. For example, the statement “clouds are as soft as pillows” is a cliché because pillows look so much like clouds visually, and emphasizing it doesn’t lead to a deeper level of understanding.
One way a teacher can drive this point home is with a graphic organizer. Giving students two columns of common objects and asking them to find the pairs indicates that some similarities exist on the surface and aren’t really very deep. A column might contain a drawing of the sun, worms, and a flower. The second column images might include a beautiful woman, a button, and a bowl of spaghetti. The pairs are obvious, which means that the similarities that might be created about them are obvious.
Another type of simile, also a cliché, is one that has been repeated so many times that it has lost its ability to carry the aha moment that makes a good simile. The first person to describe someone who was “as old as the hills” must have had a good laugh. Indeed, a well-crafted simile often causes laughter as it surprises with its sheer accuracy, and as a result, such similes are repeated so many times as to become ho-hum. Asking students to draw the simile and give it new life will drive home this point. Drawing someone on all fours in a pigsty eating like a pig brings laughter back to the simile.
Teaching similitudes should include a lesson to inspire deeply considered similitudes; one way is to bring dozens of familiar items. Students can contribute to the collection by bringing their own items or drawing sketches of whatever suits their imagination. Working in groups or individually, students can select two objects that are very dissimilar, then point to something about the two that connects them. For example, love is like a sweater that unrolls in that unless it is taken care of, it will fail to keep the wearer warm.
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