Fourth Grade · Reading · week 13

Personification

Identify personification in a sentence and write an original sentence that gives human qualities to something nonhuman.

Personification gives human qualities or actions to something that is not human -- an animal, an object, an idea, even the weather. Sandburg's fog poem does not stop at one metaphor: it goes on to describe the fog sitting quietly and then moving on, the way a cat might sit and watch before wandering off. Treating the fog as if it can sit and decide to move is personification -- giving a human or animal-like action to something that cannot actually do it.

A simple example: "The wind whispered through the trees." Wind cannot whisper -- only people, or creatures, can. Giving the wind that human action creates a soft, almost secretive feeling.

📋 For the teacher
Teach it (10–15 min):
  • Look out the window together and personify something you see -- a tree, a car, a cloud -- as a quick daily warm-up.
  • Point out personification in songs or movies your child already knows; it is everywhere once you start looking.
  • Ask "could this thing really do that action?" as the test for personification versus a literal description.
  • Connect back to the fog poem from last week to show how one poem can use more than one device at once.
Talk about it:
  • What is the test for whether a sentence uses personification?
  • Why might a writer give human qualities to something like the wind or the sea?
  • What object in our house would you personify, and what human quality would you give it?

Mastery looks like: They can identify personification in a sentence and write an original sentence that gives human qualities to something nonhuman.

Common stumbles: Confusing any vivid description with personification, even when no human quality or action is actually present.

See it visually

Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.

Figurative LanguageFlip between the literal picture and the real meaning of a simile, metaphor, or idiom.try →Sentence BuilderDrag word tiles into a real sentence, with a capital and end mark.try →
Homework for this lessonType it, write it with a stylus, or print it for pencil & paper.open →
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