Analogies: Two Engaging Activities

This week has been all about analogies for me. I created a few new analogy resources (if you are interested, you can check them out here), and I found myself recalling two of my favorite analogy activities that I used to do with fifth graders.

Activity #1- Picture This! As an ESL co-teacher, it probably comes as no surprise that I'm all about visuals to accompany written words. Therefore, we did this activity fairly early in our study of analogies. Once students were first introduced to analogies through a PowerPoint, this was the second activity that we did.

I gave each student a sheet of white paper and told them to fold it in half (hamburger-style). Next, I instructed them to open their paper, trace the fold line with their pencil, and then draw two diagonal lines: one from the bottom left corner of the sheet to the top of the fold, and the other from the bottom of the fold to the top right corner of the sheet.

I then instructed my students to write an analogy at the bottom of the paper, and then illustrate it using the spaces above. This was my sample:

My fifth graders always loved this activity, and I really enjoyed seeing how creative they could be. They often wrote analogies that I never would have thought of, and they were always eager to share their creativity with their classmates! (I really wish that I would have snapped some photos of their work, but this was an activity I did before my blogging days began.)

Activity #2: Sticky Analogies Sticky notes make everything more fun, right? Another favorite activity began when I wrote the beginning of six analogies on sheets of brightly-colored paper. One by one I showed students the analogy starters, and I asked them to help me determine which type of analogy was started (synonym, antonym, part to whole, etc). Using magnets, I hung the sheets across the board at the front of the room.

I then gave each student three sticky notes. They had to cut the sticky notes in half, and then finish as many analogies as possible in the six minutes I gave them.

At the end of the six minutes, there were sticky notes covering the papers and spilling onto the board. After the timer sounded, we quickly read through many of the sticky notes. There were times when I had to remove a sticky note or two because the analogy wasn't quite aligned. Again, it was entertaining to see what the students wrote to complete each analogy.
Do you have any fun analogy activities that you and your students enjoy doing? Please share them! Also, come visit again on Monday, when I share my analogy anchor chart for my Anchors Away Monday link-up!