Customer Reviews

20 Hands-on Activities For Learning Idioms

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I had seen this book attached to the Dictionary of Idioms, which I absolutely love, but the Activities for Learning Idioms leaves much to be desired for anyone teaching students beyond the 6th grade. There is a heavy concentration on coloring/cut/paste activities, making the bulk of the book inappropriate for any student beyond the 4th grade. The focus ends up being a list of idioms by type (for example: "Birds of a feather..." would fall under an animal worksheet/book, and the students would compile these 'animal' related idioms with the animal worksheet. Other themes include: Heart In the Right Place (heart related idioms, Day related idioms (Idioms that use 'day'), Idioms that use the five senses, Fire idioms, Number related idioms, Tree idioms, Colored themes, Food idioms). There are some games appropriate for all ages, but they seem very complicated for students with autism or low English skills.

There are also 4 pages of worksheets that encourage writing, but they are only effective for those students who have constantly heard idioms and can actively connect those common sayings.

Good projects in this work book include: Stressing the importance of linking the idiom to an appropriate usage and its true meaning. In addition, there are 2 or 3 sheets of 'draw' the meaning of an idiom. And finally, they do have a nice mini-glossary of idioms in the back of the book.

I would probably encourage anyone who needs to impliment an idiom based lesson plan to skip this book over unless they are willing to do the art and allow the students to invest time in to exploring meanings.