Awesome Hands On Activities For Teaching Literary Elements Susan Van Zile

Teaching literary elements doesn't have to mean handing out yet another worksheet

I spent last fall working with a group of middle school English teachers who were hitting a wall with figurative language instruction. They were tired of the same color-coding exercises, and students were disengaged within five minutes. Something needed to shift. That's when I ran across the work of Susan Van Zile on hands-on literary activities, and it turned out to be one of those resources that actually delivered on its promise. Van Zile's approach isn't built around novelty for its own sake. The activities are structured so that the tactile component reinforces the conceptual learning rather than replacing it. I've seen lessons where students physically manipulate cards representing different literary devices, sort them into categories, then write their own examples. The physical act of moving the cards seems to lock the definitions in place better than rereading a textbook passage ever does. It's a small difference, but over a semester it adds up. The resource covers the standard literary toolkit: metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism, irony, foreshadowing, allusion, and imagery. Each device gets at least one activity designed for classroom implementation. Some are quick warm-ups that take fifteen minutes. Others run a full class period. The flexibility matters because not every teacher has the luxury of extended block scheduling.

How to use the resource in practice

Start simple. Pick one literary element per week and pair it with the corresponding activity. Don't try to cover everything at once. When I introduced personification last year, I used the activity that asks students to write a short monologue from the perspective of an inanimate object in the classroom. A desk. A clock. A water fountain. The students wrote surprisingly effective pieces when they had a physical anchor for the concept. One student wrote from the perspective of a classroom rug and described feeling "crushed under a thousand running feet" — that's personification working correctly, and she understood it without me having to define it first. The materials are straightforward. Print cards, cut them out, and you're ready. Most activities require paper, markers, and optionally sticky notes. If you're doing this in a one-to-one device environment, some activities have digital adaptations. I found the analog version works better for younger students who need the sensory input, but the digital versions are reasonable for older groups or remote instruction.

A realistic problem I encountered and how I solved it

Here's something the promotional material doesn't mention: several of the activities assume students already have a working vocabulary of the terms. When I tried the symbolism activity with a group of struggling readers who had never distinguished between literal and figurative meaning, the activity stalled. They could sort the cards, but they couldn't articulate why a particular image represented something beyond its surface meaning. The activity requires that foundational understanding to work. My workaround was to pre-teach the concept using a completely different method — a short video lesson and a class discussion with familiar examples before introducing the Van Zile activity. Once they had the basic idea of symbolism, the hands-on sorting task became meaningful rather than confusing. I spent an extra day on the prereq material, but the payoff was clear. Students who normally zone out during literary analysis were engaged during the activity phase.

What the activities actually look like in a lesson

Let me walk through one. The figurative language escape room activity is probably the most involved piece in the collection. Students move through a series of stations. At each station, they solve a puzzle that requires them to identify a literary device. The puzzles are layered — some ask for identification, others ask for creation, and a few ask for analysis. It takes roughly forty-five minutes to an hour. You'll need to prep materials in advance: print the station cards, create envelopes, set up answer keys. The prep time is real. I'd estimate about twenty to thirty minutes of preparation for a single class session. Another example is the literary element matching game. Students draw cards and match them to definitions or examples. It's faster — about twenty minutes — and works well as a review activity. I've used this at the start of a unit to assess prior knowledge and again at the end to measure growth. The game format reduces anxiety compared to a traditional quiz, which is useful for students who test poorly under pressure.

The limitations you should know about

The activities are strongest for students who are reading at or near grade level. The language in the instructions and the literary examples used can be dense. If you have a class with a significant number of English language learners or students reading two or more grade levels below, you'll need to scaffold heavily. I had to simplify the vocabulary in about half the activities for my lower-level group. It's doable, but it adds prep time. Another constraint: these activities work best with small groups or whole-class participation. If you're managing a large class — thirty-five students or more — the logistics of distributing materials and monitoring multiple groups can become chaotic. I'd recommend breaking into smaller stations and rotating through them rather than attempting the full-class version. It's more work for you, but it keeps the activity functional. There's also the matter of assessment alignment. The activities themselves are engaging, but they don't automatically translate to measurable learning outcomes unless you build in a checking mechanism. After each activity, I add a short written reflection or a quick exit ticket. Five minutes max. It gives you data and confirms the students actually learned the concept rather than just enjoying the game.

Who this resource is and isn't for

If you're a teacher who values movement-based learning and wants to break away from worksheet-heavy instruction, this is worth your time. The activities are practical, not theoretical. They've been classroom-tested, and the instructions are clear enough that a substitute teacher could run them with minimal preparation. If you're looking for a complete curriculum or a ready-made lesson plan for every day of the term, this won't fill that gap. The resource is a supplement. It works alongside your existing texts and units. The best results come when you pair these activities with the literature you're already teaching rather than treating them as standalone content. I've been using Van Zile's materials for over a year now, and my students consistently perform better on literary device identification questions during standardized assessments compared to previous years. I can't attribute that entirely to these activities — there are too many variables in a classroom — but the engagement increase is noticeable, and engagement correlates with retention. That's the practical takeaway.

Getting started with Awesome Hands On Activities For Teaching Literary Elements Susan Van Zile

The resource is available through Teachers Pay Teachers and a few educational publisher sites. Look for the title that includes hands-on activities with a focus on figurative language and literary devices. The price typically ranges between fifteen and twenty-five dollars depending on whether you're getting the full bundle or individual activities. If you're on a tight budget, start with one or two activities and see how your students respond before committing to the full collection. One final note: don't underestimate the value of student-created examples. The activities that ask students to produce their own metaphors, similes, or personified descriptions generate the deepest learning. I've found that when students write something original, they understand the concept better than when they simply identify examples in a text. It's a subtle distinction, but it matters for long-term retention.