7.9.D
The Standard
describe how the author's use of figurative language such as metaphor and personification achieves specific purposes
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language Arts and Reading · Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students find metaphors and personification in a text. They explain why the author used each phrase and how it affects meaning, mood, imagery, or emphasis.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students accurately identify metaphors and personification in a text. They explain how each choice creates an image, sets a mood, emphasizes an idea, or reveals a character's view.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may label any comparison as a metaphor, including similes. They may treat personification as any description of an object. They often name the device without explaining its effect or purpose.
How to Assess It
- Give students a short paragraph containing one metaphor and one example of personification. Ask them to identify each phrase and explain what it helps the reader understand, feel, or picture.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs sentence cards to sort as metaphor or personification, then add a sticky note naming each phrase's intended effect.
Ask students to explain how the line "The hallway swallowed me" changes the mood compared with "I entered the hallway."
Play Effect Match by having teams pair figurative language examples with purpose cards such as create tension, show sadness, or emphasize speed.
Examine figurative language in an advertisement or song lyric, then discuss how it shapes the audience's response to the message.
Keep exploring
Related Standards
- 5.10.D
describe how the author's use of imagery, literal and figurative language such as simile and metaphor, and sound devices achieves specific purposes;
- 6.9.D
describe how the author's use of figurative language such as metaphor and personification achieves specific purposes;
- 8.9.D
describe how the author's use of figurative language such as extended metaphor achieves specific purposes;
- 3.10.D
describe how the author's use of imagery, literal and figurative language such as simile, and sound devices such as onomatopoeia achieves specific purposes;
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