Students are more likely to understand, recall, and care about what an idiom means after having played with the phrase through a highly engaging exploration of metaphorical language. Eye on Idioms can be used to engage students in a study of seven idioms. After viewing the literal representation of each idiom, students are asked to complete the sentence by selecting the correct idiom from the list. Using context clues from the sentence, students can then determine the metaphorical meaning of the idiom. As a final step, students are asked to use the idiom in a sentence to show their understanding of its meaning. Students should be reminded to print the page after completing each idiom exercise since their work cannot be saved electronically.

Visit this interactive tool at: http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/idioms/.

ReadWriteThink Lessons That Use This Tool

Figurative Language: Teaching Idioms (3-5)
This lesson focuses on introducing idioms to students in the language arts classroom. Through direct instruction of idioms, students gain an in-depth understanding of this form of figurative language. Idioms are presented through read-alouds, literal representations, and the Internet.