Vocabulary Teaching Guide
Teaching Personification
Personification gives a non-human thing a human action — the wind whispered, the sun smiled. Teach the find-the-human-verb test, for grades 4–6.
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Personification is the figurative-language tool that gives students the most vivid images — the wind whispered, the sun smiled, the thunder grumbled. It is also one of the easiest to teach, because the pattern is so clear: a non-human thing does something only a person can do. Once students hear the pattern, they spot it everywhere and start using it in their own writing. This guide covers how to teach personification in grades 4–6 and pairs with the printable personification worksheets for practice.
Personification is giving human qualities or actions to something that is not human — an object, an animal, an idea, or a force of nature. It is a kind of figurative language, so it is never literally true.
What Personification Is
The pattern is a non-human subject paired with a human action or feeling:
- The flowers danced in the breeze. (flowers cannot dance)
- The alarm clock screamed at me. (a clock cannot scream)
- The old house groaned in the wind. (a house cannot groan)
Spotting the Human Action
The whole skill is a two-part check: find the non-human thing, then find the human thing it is doing. If a wind whispers or a sun smiles, the human verb is the giveaway. Teaching students to underline the verb and ask “can a real person do this, but not that thing?” makes personification easy to identify.
Personification vs. Simile and Metaphor
All three are figurative language, so students confuse them — the difference is the move each one makes:
- Simile/metaphor — compare two things (brave as a lion). See {L(SIMILE, “similes and metaphors”)}.
- Personification — give a non-human thing a human action (the wind whispered).
The test: is it a comparison, or is a thing acting like a person? Only the second is personification.
Why Writers Use It
Personification makes description come alive — it turns a setting into something with a mood. “The wind blew” is a fact; “the wind howled and clawed at the windows” makes the reader feel the storm. Naming that effect helps students see why the tool is worth using in their own work.
A Teaching Sequence That Works
- Human qualities to non-human things — the definition.
- Find the non-human subject in the sentence.
- Find the human action it is doing.
- Tell it apart from simile and metaphor.
- Write your own — give the rain, a tree, or a clock a human action.
Where Students Get Stuck (and How to Help)
1. Confusing it with metaphor
Calling every non-literal phrase a metaphor. Fix: personification is specifically a human action given to a thing, not a comparison.
2. Missing animals
Thinking a talking animal in a story does not count. Fix: animals doing human things (planning, worrying, speaking) is personification too.
3. Taking it literally
“A house can’t really groan!” Fix: that is the point — it is an imaginative image, not a fact.
Where This Connects
- Similes and metaphors. The other core figurative-language tools: teaching similes and metaphors.
- Idioms. Another kind of non-literal language students meet: teaching idioms.
- Vocabulary overall. Figurative language fits the routines in vocabulary instruction strategies.
- Writing. Personification is one of the fastest ways to make a description vivid.
Browse Personification Worksheets
Printable personification worksheets that practice spotting the human action, telling it from simile and metaphor, and writing original examples — with answer keys, for grades 4–6.
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