Personification Practice

Teachers should create personification practice lesson plans that start with using personification in a sentence building on students’ prior knowledge of the concept (the wind howled; the moon played hide and seek with the clouds; time flies when you’re having fun).

Teaching to Use Personification in Sentences

As students get older, personification practice lists should be paired with written activities and implemented to further show how authors use the figure of speech to paint a picture in their writing. For example, in Langston Hughes poem, “Dreams,” the writer uses personification and imagery to contrast a life with dreams and a life without dreams (“Hold fast to dreams / For when dreams go / Life is a barren field”). You can use our personification online games, or games you create yourself for the classroom, to provide further practice that is fun for students of all ages.

VocabularySpellingCity can supplement personification practice lessons through ready-to-use K-12 personification practice lists, online games, and free printable worksheets.

The term personification first appears in the sixth grade ELA Common Core Standards. However, early readers may first encounter personification in nursery rhymes, like “Humpty Dumpty” and in fairy tales, like The Gingerbread Man. In the primary grades, teachers can introduce a basic concept of personification.

At a young age, students are also exposed to anthropomorphic stories. Anthropomorphism is when an author attributes human characteristics and/or behaviors to animals. Fables, like The Tortoise and the Hare, and fairy tales, like Little Red Riding Hood, portray animal characters with human qualities. In second grade, students are expected to learn in depth about fables. Second grade teachers can incorporate an anthropomorphism lesson, using a personification practice list, into their fables unit of study to gain experience using personification in a sentence.

In addition, students become familiar with the concept as they read literature and poetry in which authors use personification with inanimate objects (The sun smiled upon the earth), or with abstract ideas (The math problem refused to be solved). In upper grade levels, students will interpret personification in context as well as analyze the role of the figurative language within the text. Personification word study often focuses on the use of verbs, which are especially important in creating the human-like qualities. Students use personification practice lists in their own writing using VocabularySpellingCity’s Sentence Writing Practice or Paragraph Writing Practice as a personification online game.

Common Core State Standards Related to Personification

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.3.5.a
Distinguish the literal and nonliteral meanings of words and phrases in context (e.g., take steps).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.5.5.a
Interpret figurative language, including similes and metaphors, in context.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.6.5.a
Interpret figures of speech (e.g., personification) in context.