Teaching Metaphor With a Structured Worksheet Approach
Most teachers I know reach for the same three resources when they want to cover figurative language: a PDF from Teachers Pay Teachers, a blank Google Doc, and about forty-five minutes of watching students pretend they care. The And Metaphor Worksheet solves a specific problem that most generic worksheets don't touch, which is the gap between identifying a metaphor and actually understanding how the comparison works structurally. I built a custom version of this for my junior high ELA classes about three years ago after noticing that my students could pick out "life is a highway" on a multiple choice test but couldn't write one that made any sense. They kept defaulting to similes with "like" or "as" because they didn't understand what the metaphor was actually doing cognitively. The worksheet forces them to map both sides of the comparison separately before they're allowed to combine them.
How the And Metaphor Worksheet Actually Works
The core structure is simpler than most people think. You have two columns on the left side of the page. One column is for the tenor, which is the actual thing being described. The other column is for the vehicle, which is the image you're using to describe it. The right side of the page has a single large box where students write their complete metaphor. But the trick part is the middle section, usually three or four rows of prompting questions that ask students to list at least three shared attributes between the tenor and vehicle before they're allowed to write the final sentence. The worksheet essentially makes them do the analytical work upfront instead of guessing at a clever sounding phrase. When I first tried using a pre-made version from a commercial publisher, I ran into a problem where the prompts were too abstract for my eighth graders. The worksheet asked them to "identify the conceptual overlap" which meant nothing to fourteen year olds. I rewrote those prompts to read more like "what does X have in common with Y" and "list three things you could say about both." That small change cut the time they spent confused by roughly half and increased the quality of their final metaphors noticeably. I'd recommend editing any off-the-shelf version you find to match your students' reading level before you hand it out.
Download and Setup
The And Metaphor Worksheet is available in both printable PDF and editable Google Sheets formats. I keep a copy on my shared drive and assign it through Google Classroom. The Google Sheets version lets me add conditional formatting that highlights cells in yellow when a student has filled in all three attribute rows but hasn't written their final metaphor yet. It's a minor feature but it saves me from having to circulate the room constantly checking for half-finished work. The PDF version works fine for in-class use with whiteboards or hard copies, though you lose the tracking capability. If you're using this with advanced students, I'd suggest removing the attribute prompting section entirely and replacing it with a constraint challenge, like requiring the metaphor to work across at least four different domains or to avoid any vehicle that's been used more than twice in the last week of examples. Regular students benefit from the scaffolding, but honors kids get bored once they've figured out the basic mechanic.
Common Mistakes and What to Do About Them
The biggest issue I see is students treating the worksheet like a fill-in-the-blank exercise rather than an analytical tool. They'll write something like "anger is a volcano" and then list three attributes that are basically the same thing repeated in different words: hot, explosive, dangerous. That doesn't count as having done the work. I require them to find attributes that aren't just synonyms for each other, which pushes them toward more interesting comparisons like comparing anger to a car engine that's overheating because it's been idling too long, or comparing it to a packed suitcase that someone forgot to close. Another problem surface is when students pick a tenor and vehicle that have almost nothing in common, then spend the entire class trying to force a connection that isn't there. The worksheet doesn't prevent this unless you add a gate check step where students swap papers with a partner and the partner has to identify at least two valid shared attributes before the metaphor gets accepted. I do this about once a week and it catches lazy choices early. The method has real limitations that you should know about. It works well for straightforward, descriptive metaphors but falls apart when students are working with extended metaphors or conceptual metaphors that span paragraphs. The format also encourages overly literal comparisons because the attribute listing pushes students toward concrete shared qualities rather than abstract emotional resonance. A metaphor like "grief is a heavy coat you can't take off" works beautifully in free writing but might struggle to get through the structured worksheet because the shared attributes aren't immediately obvious. I supplement the And Metaphor Worksheet with unprompted creative writing sessions at least once a week so students don't become robotic in their figurative language.
The worksheet typically takes twenty to thirty minutes in a standard class period depending on how many metaphors you require. Most teachers assign three to five, which is about right. Going beyond five starts pushing into repetition territory where students run out of interesting comparisons and start recycling the same vehicles. If you're covering this unit over multiple days, I'd space it out rather than trying to batch it into a single session.
