1. Ask your students to draw a tree.

2. Tell them that the trunk stands for their essential self; the roots are their strengths and beliefs, the things that hold them up; the branches, with their leaves and fruit, represent dreams and goals.

3. Ask students to write words on their tree to describe these aspects of themselves.

4. Ask them to write a poem or story based on these words.

Lesson is from the WritersCorps book “Jump Write In.”

One basic approach is to discuss the imagery used in a particular poem. The following student poem, for example, uses both straightforward and metaphoric images:

Sweet Bun

The bridge is pink with people crossing it.
It feels like wood under my feet.
The water is dark blue.
The bridge tastes like a round soft sweet bun,
the kind Chinese people make.
It smells like bread.

– Lily Nguyen, 9
Mercy Services
Poem is from the 1999 anthology “What It Took for Me to Get Here”

Lesson is from the WritersCorps book “Jump Write In!”

1. Read the following examples of metaphor from students of WritersCorps teacher Chad Sweeney:

The stars are white fish swimming in the night sea.

My heart is a box that I open and close.

My soul is a river flowing from the mountains.

Love is the last fruit on an old tree.

Poetry is a horse running on a dark street.

My life is a wrinkled note dropped into the trash.

The moon is a pearl hanging from a necklace.

My mind is an open window with the wind blowing in.

2. Ask students: “What is a metaphor?” Ask questions such as “How is an open window different from a closed window with boards nailing it shut? What do these different metaphors say about the state of the poet’s mind?”

3. Then read the following descriptions, which are not metaphors.

The stars are shining bright in the black night.

My heart is read.

Love is good.

4. Ask students to note the difference between metaphor and the straight-forward statements.

5. Ask students to write their own metaphors, choosing one of hte itmes in the earlier list (stars, heart, soul, love poetry, life, m oon, mind). Chad suggests that his students repeat the same opening phrase and write at least five different metaphors. He enourages his students to think of metaphors that no one has ever thought of before.

From the WritersCorps book “Jump Write In!”