My discovery of this website led to the creation of one of my favorite figurative language lessons.  I began our class discussion of onomatopoeias by reading aloud the picture book:  Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears by Verna Ardema.  We would list the onomatopoetic words (“sound effect words” as I started out calling them) on the board as I read the book.  At the book’s conclusion, we would discuss the word list as a class, and the students would share their ideas about what they thought the words had in common.  Finally, I would explain that each word was onomatopoetic.  We would brainstorm additional onomatopoetic words together.  Then, to move the learning beyond basic recognition and to deepen their understanding of the concept, I would use the website below.

The website:

• http://interactives.mped.org/preview_mg.aspx?id=736&title

Classroom Applications: 

1.  Extension Activity:  I challenged my students to create their own onomatopoetic words to accurately describe each sound in this teaching tool.   Because this is a very difficult activity for some students, I found that working in groups or partners was most successful as long as each group could share more than one idea.  As the groups shared their words, we would replay the sound file and discuss as a class how closely their creations mimicked the real sounds.

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The websites:

• http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/idioms/idiom_1.html
• http://www.bunkum-and-codswallop.com/papers/idiom1.html
• http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/

Classroom Applications:

1)  Whole Class Activity:  Discuss with your students the difference between literal and figurative.  Then, use the illustrations and text box prompts from the first website to introduce idioms.  Practice deciphering the meaning of each idiom using sentence context clues as a whole class.

2)  Extension:  For students already familiar with common idioms and in need of a challenge, use the second website.  See if your students can identify each idiom when it is described with animal references.

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