Similes and Metaphors in Popular Music!

This interesting and highly stimulating lesson enables students to demonstrate a developed and sustained understanding of the effect of figurative language in popular music texts. In particular, students learn to explore the meanings behind similes and metaphors across songs from a range of genres, considering the effect upon the whole text and the intended audience. As one would expect, Students love learning about similes and metaphors through popular music, and this lesson can really help to open students’ eyes to how language can be crafted for effect. This has numerous benefits in later poetry and descriptive writing lessons.

The lesson follows a clear, logical, bite-size learning journey, which guides students towards differentiated learning objectives. Over the course of this journey, they become able to:
- Define and identify similes and metaphors;
- Explain the similarities and differences between songs and poetry;
- Observe and listen to several examples of similes and metaphors in popular music examples;
- Understand and analyse the effect of similes and metaphors upon meanings and the reader;
- Apply their knowledge of why similes and metaphors are used to a range of contexts and musical genres;
- Collaborate and present their key findings about similes and metaphors in songs to their classmates;
- Self-assess their learning attempts.

This resource pack includes:
- A visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint presentation;
- Link to an online compilation video of similes and metaphors in popular music;
- 3 x lyrics analysis worksheets of varying difficulties (Katy Perry, Train, and Florence and the Machine - all clean)
- A detailed lesson plan, complete with what the teacher and students should aim to achieve at each stage of the lesson.

All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint.