Using Mentor Texts to Teach Similes in Writing

Similes and metaphors might be my favorite figurative language skills to teach because once students notice what they are, they find them everywhere in fiction literature. Similes make everything better. At first glance, students keep reading over them, but the understanding of similes and metaphors unlocks another layer of reading. It is a layer that is deeper and makes readers really think. Figurative language skills matter because they help build critical readers. When building sentence fluency, these skills create stronger readers that add sentence variety and fluency to their writing skills. While you can catch similes in almost any work of fiction these days, I like the books featured in this post for the deliberate instruction of simile usage in literature. This post will outline three books and examples of similes, and it will also show you how I help young writers transfer these skills to their own writing through the mentor text process.

Easy as pie.