Visual Metaphors

Metaphors--my penultimate lesson for the 8th graders at my Dyad placement.  I love doing metaphors.  It seems so simple, but requires a lot of creativity to create a really good metaphor.  Transforming the metaphor into a visual representation increases the level of difficulty.  One must consider tone, connections between the target and the source, literal or figurative representations, etc. 

It wasn't surprising that the high-cap kids in my class had a hard time getting started.  Sometimes, when you are given this much creative license, its hard to know where to begin.  So I gave them some abstract words to define by using metaphors, such as freedom.  I asked them to describe freedom, then link those descriptions to actual objects.  You'll see some of the kids' work on freedom below. 

Once their brains got warmed up, they were let loose to write and illustrate their metaphors.  There were some confusion about similes, but we worked out the kinks for the most part.  Keep in mind that the students had one class period to finish their product (though some opted to take them home to complete).  Presenting...my 8th grade students' visual metaphors: