We all want our students to be able to identify, understand, and use figurative language. Lucky for us, YouTube offers an array of videos for teaching figurative language that students will appreciate! I love incorporating video clips into mini-lessons, especially when I can pause the videos to have discussion. A teaching video with fun visuals can work well to reinforce terms and definitions. Music videos and movie shorts always grab students’ attention and also challenge their knowledge and thinking. Sometimes I’ll have students record their responses so they can self-check when we get to the answers. That way they can notice which types of figurative language they need more practice with.
My Criteria for Choosing the Videos
When perusing the many videos for teaching figurative language, I made my choices for the Top 5 with these factors in mind:
- clear graphics and sound
- good variety in the content
- accurate content
- suitable for middle school
5 BEST Videos for Teaching Figurative Language
- This video presents each literary element with its definition and then provides some examples. Terms covered are simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, and idiom. It’s a great starting point so that students can more easily locate figurative language in songs and movie clips in the videos that follow.
- This “Game Show” video uses very short clips from pop songs. You can use it as a game with your students in groups. Just give each group a whiteboard for their answers. Play the first example and then pause it. Groups members confer (quietly), and record their answer on the whiteboard. All groups hold their answers up when you give the signal. Then un-pause the video as it shows the answer on the next slide. Give one point for groups with the correct answer. Tally at the end for the winning group!
- Maybe you’ve used videos from this author before, as he has several on ELA topics. I like this one to help teach the literary concepts at 8th grade, and students enjoy the engaging visuals, examples, and explanations.
4. This video for teaching figurative language is perfect to reinforce the 4 main types: simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. The author built in pauses for discussion so you don’t have to pause it. She also highlights the text and includes answers.
5. Here’s one more you may like. The author provides an array of songs, and the lyrics with the literary device are identified right after each song (simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole).
I hope I’ve saved you some time in searching online for videos for teaching figurative language. These five stood out for me as engaging and appropriate for middle school.
If you’d like an engaging learning activity for figurative language, check out my Figurative Language Stations.
Joy, love this selection of videos!! You really have done all the work 🙂 . I’m going to use this great resource and pass it on to my teacher peeps!! THANK YOU!! Great attention grabbers too for upper grades. Talk about some buy in!!
Joy, this is a great collection of resources to help engage middle schoolers with figurative language. I’m in a teacher prep program currently, and I’ve seen that it can be challenging to engage 6th – 8th grade students in discussion about these abstract ideas using the “canon,” so I appreciate that you’ve compiled these resources that focus on figurative language in popular culture. These are great activities and jumping-off points for lectures or individual student research. Thanks for sharing!
These videos are fun! They will be useful in the future!
Wow, I loved these! The videos weren’t too long, were easy to understand and definitely kept me interested!
It is so awesome to have kid friendly videos to help teach figurative language. And it’s cool that you offer a diversity of “styles;” I can already see certain videos having more appeal with the different personalities in my classes. Thanks so much for sharing this list with us!
These videos will definitely add edutainment to the kids in class. And that’s what our 21 century generation resonates with. Bravo!
Uhh.. thanks alot for the video. very helpful. this will help me do better on FL I really appreciate it thanks so much