Awesome Ideas on How To Teach Personification

Introduction

If you’re wondering how to teach personification and make it stick with your students, you aren’t alone. While many students can identify examples of personification in a story or a poem, they often struggle to explain why an author chose to use it or how it contributes to the meaning, mood, or imagery of a text.

Learning how to teach personification effectively means moving beyond simple identification activities. Students benefit most when they’re given multiple opportunities to recognize it, discuss its purpose, and apply it in their own reading and writing. Through engaging practice and purposeful instruction, they can develop a much deeper understanding of this one of many important figurative-language skills.

The following strategies are classroom-tested ideas I’ve used with my own students to help them confidently identify, analyze, and use personification. Whether you’re introducing the concept for the first time or looking for fresh ways to reinforce it, these activities can help make your personification lessons more meaningful and memorable.

Close Reading

The most common way on how to teach personification involves close reading, an all-too-familiar analytical approach to literature that’s a staple in the ELAR classroom. By carefully examining an author’s language choices, students move beyond simply spotting examples of personification and begin to understand how figurative language shapes meaning, develops tone, and creates vivid imagery.

As students repeatedly encounter personification in authentic texts, they begin to recognize patterns in an author’s craft. This repeated exposure helps them understand that personification serves a specific purpose and contributes to the reader’s overall experience.

There are three guiding questions I like to use with my students when beginning a close reading:

• What is being personified?
• What is the human action?
• How does this contribute to the text?

The first two questions help break down the personification being discussed. The third question encourages deeper thinking by shifting the focus from identification to analysis. Instead of simply recognizing figurative language, students begin evaluating why the author used personification and how it strengthens the text.

To further scaffold that analytical thinking, I often extend our close-reading discussions by asking students:

• Why might the author choose to personify this?
• What feeling or mood does the personification create?
• How does it contribute to the reader’s understanding of the text?
• What would change if the author described this literally instead of figuratively?

These follow-up questions encourage students to think like literary critics rather than simply identifying figurative language. As they justify their responses with textual evidence, they develop stronger analytical skills that transfer naturally to literary analysis essays, classroom discussions, and other reading comprehension activities.

Creative Activities

While close reading lays the foundation for understanding figurative language, creative activities allow students to apply what they’ve learned in meaningful ways. If you’re exploring how to teach personification, incorporating hands-on and student-centered activities can make abstract concepts much more concrete. The following activities encourage students to move beyond identification and towards creation, analysis, and evaluation.

Everyday Object

One of my favorite writing activities for how to teach personification is similar to Power Writing. Begin by projecting an image of an everyday object (e.g. a chair, smartphone, backpack, or desk) and challenging students to write a short paragraph that brings the object to life. Encourage them to give it thoughts, emotions, motivations, dialogue, or human behaviors.

For struggling writers or English Language Learners (ELLs), provide sentence frames beneath the image to help them get started. Prompts such as “I wish people would…” or “Every morning, I feel…” give students a scaffold while still allowing room for creativity.

After students finish writing, I encourage students to share their paragraphs with the class. Rather than simply listening, I have students analyze each example using close-reading questions:

• What is being personified?
• What human qualities or actions are being given to the object?
• How does the personification make the writing more engaging or meaningful?

Connecting creative writing back to literary analysis reinforces the idea that authors make intentional choices when using figurative language.

Personification Drawing

Another engaging activity for how to teach personification (and perhaps my favorite one) is having students draw a visual representation of it.

For example, when reading “A White Heron” by Sara Orne Jewett, I ask students to select one example from the text and illustrate it. After completing and coloring their drawing, they write the original quotation beneath their illustration.

This activity encourages students to slow down and visualize the figurative language they’re reading. Translating words into images often leads to richer classroom discussions because students begin noticing details they may have overlooked during their initial reading (one of many benefits of writing).

As an extension (and if time permits), I have students participate in a gallery walk, explaining why they chose their example and how the personification contributes to the mood, imagery, or overall meaning of the text.

Personification Story

Another creative option of how to teach personification is having students write a short narrative from the perspective of a personified object.

Whether they’re writing about a lonely pencil, an exhausted backpack, or a nervous traffic light, students must consistently apply the characteristics of personification throughout their story. This not only strengthens their understanding of figurative language but also reinforces characterization, voice, and descriptive writing skills.

When I have my students share their stories, I encourage their classmates to identify the examples of personification and discuss how they helped develop the object’s personality. Activities like this demonstrate that how to teach personification isn’t limited to identifying examples in literature. Students deepen their understanding when they become authors themselves.

Personification in Media

Literature isn’t the only place students encounter personification. Another engaging approach for how to teach personification is examining examples from everyday media. Because students are already familiar with commercials, animated films, and brand mascots, these examples provide authentic opportunities to analyze figurative language in real-world contexts.

Advertisements and branding are one example of personification in media. For instance, the M&M commercials give each colored candy its own personality, voice, and emotions. After watching a few commercials, students can use the same close-reading questions to discuss why the company personified the characters and how that choices influences the audience.

Animated films provide another rich source of examples. Inside Out, for example, personifies human emotions by giving them distinct personalities, motivations, and interactions. Showing a short clip allows students to analyze how personification helps viewers better understand complex emotions while also advancing the story.

Using media alongside traditional texts demonstrates that personification extends far beyond novels and poems. It helps students recognize figurative language in the world around them, making lessons more relevant, engaging, and memorable.

Conclusion

Knowing how to teach personification is about more than helping students identify examples figurative language. It’s about giving them the tools to analyze an author’s purpose, evaluate the impact of literary devices, and confidently apply personification in their own reading and writing.

Whether you choose to incorporate close reading, creative activities, visual art, or examples from everyday media, each strategy gives students another opportunity to explore how personification creates imagery, develops mood, and brings a text to life. By providing repeated, meaningful practice, you’ll help students move beyond simple identification and develop a deeper appreciation for how authors use figurative language intentionally.

If you’re looking for how to teach personification in a way that’s engaging, memorable, and academically meaningful, these strategies are a great place to start.

When thinking of how to teach personification, how do you approach it in your classroom? Do you have a favorite lesson, activity, or mentor text that your students enjoy? Share your ideas as I’d love to know what’s worked for you.