February 7, 2008

Worksheet: Personification

Lesson 18: 3x each

Personification

Personification is the technique of giving a non-human thing human qualities such as hearing, feeling, talking, or making decisions. Writers use personification to emphasize something or make it stand out. Personification makes the material more interesting and creates a new way to look at every day things.

Read the poem "Summer Grass" by Carl Sandburg and think about how personification is used to make the poem more descriptive.

"Summer Grass" by Carl Sandburg

Summer grass aches and whispers

It wants something: it calls and sings; it pours

out wishes to the overhead stars.

The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow

coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.

On a separate sheet of paper, write each sentence and underline the non-human thing and circle the human quality.

1. The winter wrapped its icy claws around Northeast Pennsylvania.

2. The alarm clock screeched that it was time to get up.

3. Fear grabbed me as I heard footsteps behind me.

4. The washer sputtered and groaned as it removed the mud

from the knees of my old jeans.

5. The printer spit out more copies than I needed.

6. The branches of the tree pointed to the old dirt road.

7. The flood waters swallowed the trees in one big gulp.

8. The stars winked at us from the night sky.

9. Listening to the piano sing its happy tune made me want to

dance.

10. That carrot cake with the cream cheese icing is calling my name.

Miss Clark & Mrs. Hogsett