4th Grade · Grammar · L.4.5.A

Personification Lesson Plan for 4th Grade

A ready-to-teach personification lesson for 4th Grade. Everything below is classroom-tested structure: an objective, a 45-minute sequence, a way to check who got it, and 3 printable practice pages.

Approximately 45 minutes

Learning objective

Identify personification in poems and prose passages
Recognize human qualities assigned to non-human objects
Write original sentences using personification to enhance description

Materials

Personification - Reader
Personification - Sun
Personification - Wind
Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples

Lesson steps

1. Notice it first (5 min)
Put two sentences on the board, one that uses personification correctly and one that does not. Ask students which sounds right before you name any rule. Noticing comes before naming.
2. Name the rule (I do) (8 min)
Now name personification and state the rule in one sentence. Write it where it can stay all week. Model correcting the broken sentence from the warm-up.
3. Fix them together (we do) (12 min)
Work through four or five sentences as a class. Mix in one that is already correct, because students who are pattern-matching rather than thinking will "fix" it anyway and reveal themselves.
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "Personification - Reader". Students work independently. Circulate and watch for the students who can do the exercise but cannot explain the rule, since that gap shows up later in their writing.
5. Apply it to real writing (5 min)
Students find one place in their own writing folder where personification applies, and fix it. This is the step that moves the rule from worksheet to writing.

Check for understanding

Read the last two sentences of each student's independent work. Applying personification correctly in their own sentence matters more than getting the exercise items right.

Differentiation

Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild personification with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.

Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own personification problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand personification.

Skills covered in this lesson

Personification

Questions teachers ask about teaching personification

What is personification and when is it taught in fourth grade?

Personification is giving human qualities, feelings, or actions to non-human things: The wind howled angrily. The stars danced in the sky. It is a figurative language device taught in fourth grade as part of CCSS L.4.5a, which covers simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. Recognizing personification improves reading comprehension of literary texts.

How do you teach personification to fourth graders?

Start with obvious examples - thunder roared, the sun smiled - then move to subtler ones. Have students write three sentences personifying the same object (the old oak tree) using different human traits. Worksheets that ask students to identify the human quality being assigned and explain why the author used it develop both recognition and analytical skills.

How is personification different from a simile or metaphor?

Similes compare using like or as (the wind was like a wolf), metaphors make a direct comparison (the wind was a wolf), and personification gives human attributes to a non-human thing (the wind howled like a wolf or the wind complained). All three are figurative devices covered in CCSS L.4.5a. Worksheets that ask students to classify and write all three types reinforce the distinctions.