Task Cards Figurative Language Sort

Narrative Center Task Cards—Figurative Language Sort 1. The group’s recorder should record the group members’ names and the date on the worksheet. 2. As a group, read each passage sort each passage into the appropriate category. 3. After completing the worksheet, check answers with the answer key. 4. Place the worksheet in the teacher’s workbasket. 5. Choose a different worksheet and start over.

1 Figurative Language Sort #1 Simile Metaphor Personification Hyperbole Idiom

1. I stood panting, egging them on, taunting them to come on and fight.

2. The disease had improved my senses—not destroyed them. Above all was the sense of hearing. I liked that I could overheard all things in the heaven and in the earth. From “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe

3. Word of the meeting spread like wildfire. Newspapers editors across the country scolded Elizabeth for her boldness. But other women joined her battle.

From Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote by Tanya L. Stone

4. She turned back to the pile of essays on her desk, spreading a plague (disease/infection) over them with her pen.

From The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt

5. Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker.

From The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan

6. I am from pointed toes melted into the floor and extended arms straight as arrows.

7. I deftly combed and brushed his wavy curls into one hairstyle after another. I was Picasso and the comb was my paintbrush.

8. The August sun promised a dry afternoon.

2 9. The misery of the house began many years before Jem and I were born. From To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

10. Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly. From Black Boy by Richard Wright

Figurative Language Sort #2 Simile Metaphor Personification Hyperbole Idiom

11. I want to say “No, this cold is like claws on my skin!” from Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

12. I look around me. Dead grass pokes through the unkind blanket of white. from Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

13. His car is red and coughs and burps when he tries to make it go. Doesn’t much like the cold, either, he says. from Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

14. The cow is near a tree. To say the truth of it, she is not the most beautiful of cows. Her belly sags and her coat is scarred…… My father would not have stood for such a weary old woman in his herd. from Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

15. The Aztecs believed that each day the sun battled its way across the heavens.

16. Language is a road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going." – by Rita Mae Brown

17. Like a dying moth, the plane flopped upside down as it spent its last energy. From “Mountain Decision” by Ben Mikaelsen

18. “I had to wait in the station for ten days-an eternity.”

3 19. Johnny roams around his yard, smoking and yelling and directing, as if a he’s boss in a shipyard.

20. My parents died when I was in my twenties—dad of a heart attack and then mother of a broken heart.

Answer Key

Figurative Language Sort

1. Idiom 2. Hyperbole 3. Simile 4. Metaphor

5. hyperbole 6. Simile 7. Metaphor 8. Personification

9. personification 10. Personification 11. Simile 12. Metaphor/personification

13. personification 14. Metaphor 15. Personification 16. Metaphor

17. simile 18. Hyperbole 19. Simile 20. Idiom

21. Refrain/Repetition 22. Alliteration 23. Onomatopoeia 24. Assonance

25. onomatopoeia 26. Assonance 27. onomatopoeia 28. Assonance

29. alliteration 30. Onomatopoeia 31. Simile 32. Simile

33. metaphor 34. Personification 35. Alliteration 36. Assonance

37. alliteration 38. Assonance 39. Idiom/Assonance 40. onomatopoeia

4 Figurative Language Sort #3

Assonance Onomatopoeia Refrain/Repetition Alliteration

21. Now, John McCain is my co-worker and my friend. He has served our country with pride and bravery. But we don't need four years . . . of the last eight years. More job loss...and less affordable health care. More high gas prices ...and less green energy. More jobs getting sent to other countries ...and fewer jobs created here. More skyrocketing debt ...loss of home ...and more bills that are crushing our families. From “Hillary Clinton’s Address at the Democratic Convention

22. “Now if we go back, we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way. From All Quiet on the Western Front

23. I hear more windows shatter. The noise is like the popping of the rice cereal in the bottom of Rachel’s breakfast dish. From “The Unmarked Tomb”

24. A thing of beauty is a joy forever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness. By John Keats, poet

25. Thump. Thump. Thump. The footsteps drew nearer, until they reached Tommy’s door.

26. “Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came.” From “Early Moon” by Carl Sandburg

27. “I heard buzz when I died.” By Emily Dickerson

28. We wear the mask that lies and grins / That shades our cheeks and hides our eyes. “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

29. “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” By Salvador Dali

30. “The bells are ringing for me and my gal” 5 From the movie For Me and My Gal

6 Figurative Language Sort #4

Alliteration Simile Metaphor Refrain / Personification Assonance Hyperbole Idiom onomatop Repetition oeia

31. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires.” -Dracula by Bram Stoker

32. “The water made a sound like kittens lapping.” - The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 33. "Men's words are bullets, their enemies take up and use against them." - Maxims by George Savile 34. “The IRLA test was taunting me. It seemed to say “Haha, you didn’t study!”

35. "Can you imagine no first dance, / freeze dried / romance, five-hour phone conversation" From “Drops of Jupiter” by Train 36. Life it seems will fade away / Drifting further every day. From “Fade to Black” by Metallica

37. You see the hate / that they servin' on a platter / So what we gonna have, / dessert or disaster?" From “Knock You Down” by Keri Hilson

7 38. I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless. From “With Love” by Thin Lizzy 39. I bet you're wondering how I knew. / Ah, what you're plans to make me blue. /With some other guy you knew before. /Between the two of us, you know I love you more. From “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye 40. The rustling leaves kept me awake.