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6 Great Tips On Teaching Idioms

As far as I know, idioms are an ingenious and clever way of conveying or sharing one’s thoughts metaphorically or you can say that expressing oneself without saying the exact words. 

Idioms can be different in different languages. They have no specific origin and can be used in multiple ways, but usually, they tend to reflect beliefs, traditions and personal identities.

Now why it is important to teach idioms to a child? Well idioms are a creative yet precise way of expression and learning and incorporating idioms can eventually uplift your conversations making them more engaging by giving your thoughts more intellectual touch. We know that children have the most expressive spirits, so it is important that whenever you ask them a penny for their thoughts they are able to express themselves even when they cannot make head or tails of their thoughts in words. 

Here are 6 great tips on teaching idioms that will uplift your child’s language giving them a more creative way of expression.

  • Idioms Illustration

Illustration is a creative activity to convey a better understanding of the topic so teachers can use this trick to teach idioms to their students in a fun and effective way. 

Conduct this activity by dividing your students in small groups, each group will get an idiom to illustrate the best illustration will be presented in the front of the class and gets on the head board.

Grouping is the best way to cross fertilize the thoughts, and ideas between children, and each of them will learn something from one another which will result in a more inventive yet simple representation of that particular thought which will be easy to understand because like minds understand better.

  • Describe A Person With An Idiom

An adequate way to learn idioms is by understanding their literal meaning and usage. To grasp the figurative sense of idioms and their proper usage would be by this trick where you describe another person with only idioms, sounds fun right?

So teachers you can ask your students to describe their friends infront of the class with idioms and watch them utilizing all their creativity and understanding in presenting their fellow’s personality.

This tip will help them learn idioms in a blink of an eye, and you will see how effectively they incorporate idioms in their daily life.

  • Give A Review Using Idioms

A great way to appreciate a child is by taking his/her suggestions about something. It makes them feel prior that their thoughts over something matters which make them more open about their likes and dislikes.

So teachers you have a chance to get a penny for your thoughts by asking your students to review their latest experience i.e a theme park, movie, food or favorite toy, but they can only review it using idioms.

In this way they will be more expressive and thoughtful, may be a bit critical too about their thoughts which will give them a proper insight about the idioms they are using in their review.

  • Act Out Your Idiom

Another fun and creative way to learn idioms in a group is by playing dumb charades. A great activity for the day, when students don’t feel like studying teachers can still make their way in to teach something useful out of it.

Write idioms on small pieces of paper, then group your students into two. A member from each group will come and pick out a piece of a paper and act out the idiom to the other group and that group has to guess the idiom.

  • Guess The Idiom From The Pictorial of Literal Meaning

Another fun guessing game for students which will not just help them learn but also boost their curiosity and interest which is helpful because, in this way they will be all ears and eyes to what you present in front of them. 

Make pictorials of the literal meanings of idioms and place them on the board, and then ask your students to guess what this idiom is and also its meaning. 

  • A Piece Of Culture

 Another fun yet useful activity for learning idioms is by asking children about their ethnicity. Each of the students will describe his / her ethnicity using maximum 2 to 3 idioms which completely describes their culture or beliefs.