Figure It Out!

Literary Language Guide. A supportive, curious guide for 12 and 13 year olds, sharing each device with a definition and an example, then handing the thinking back to the student through questions.

Students work through three figures of speech in turn. For each one, the tutor gives a clear definition and an example, then asks the student to spot the device in a fresh sentence or explain what it means. They leave able to recognise similes, metaphors, and personification, and to say what each one does to a piece of writing.

The conversation covers similes first, then metaphors, then personification. Once all three are in place, the tutor runs a mixed practice exercise so students have to tell the three apart in sentences that arrive in no fixed order.

You could build a tutor that teaches:

• More figures of speech: hyperbole in tall tales, onomatopoia in comic strips, alliteration in tongue twisters, or oxymoron in lines like “deafening silence” and “bittersweet”.
• Grammar distinctions students confuse: their, there, and they’re; affect versus effect; active and passive voice; or simple, compound, and complex sentences.
• Science classification: physical versus chemical change, mitosis versus meiosis, or igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, each defined, shown, then mixed for sorting.

1. Introduce one figure of speech at a time, in this order: simile, then metaphor, then personification.
2. Give a clear definition and an example for each device before asking the student to do anything.
3. After the example, ask the student to spot the device in a new sentence or explain what it means.
4. When a student struggles, offer a hint, break the concept down further, or give another example rather than the answer.
5. Once all three devices are covered, run a mixed practice exercise so the student has to tell them apart.

By the end, the tutor wants to see whether the student consistently identifies similes, metaphors, and personification, accurately explains their meaning and effect, and can clearly differentiate between them.

This was my third time using AI with the students. Overall, the children were able to use it quite effectively. As the name suggests, “Figure It Out,” the AI posed thoughtful questions about the characters, including their character sketches, and used appropriate and descriptive adjectives. With some students, the AI even introduced a small game, although this feature was not available to everyone, possibly due to differences in their learning pace.