Cloudy Sky Metaphors

More tips and ideas for classrooms

Language-stretching skies!

How to turn a dull day into a fascinating focus for literacy and creative development - in any spare minute of the school day!

Where I live (south Wales) it's a dull, cloudy day today. But actually, it's not so dull when you come to think about it, and describe it! Here are some thoughts of mine. You might like to use a couple as prompts for a class list:

Cloudy Sky

'Describing words': 

Grey, heavy, dull, dreary, lifeless, colourless, overcast, sultry, hazy, muggy, murky, dark, drab, insipid.

Personified descriptions:

Gloomy, sad, miserable, melancholy, sulky, moody, scowling, frowning, sighing, sobbing (if raining), angry, tired, drowsy, lethargic, languid, down-in-the-dumps, glum, sluggish.

Metaphorical terms: 

Woolly, iron, metallic, steely, soggy, porridgy, soupy.

Compound adjectives: 

Slate-grey, steel-grey, bruise-blue, stormy-sea-murky, rotten-cheese-rancid, churchyard-gloomy, forest-murky, mud-brown, skull-white, glare-bright, wet-flannel-heavy, blanket-thick, veil-close, cloak-dark, sorrow-heavy, misery-guts-gloomy.

Metaphors, stating what the sky is:

A soaking flannel, a soggy rag, a moth-eaten blanket, a hanging veil, an angry god, a sulking giantess, a clown on strike, a glaring monster, a dragon's sigh, a clump of cotton wool, a sad story, a bruise, a bully, a lazy-bones.

Kennings (two-noun compound phrases, conveying figurative images):

Game-wrecker, fun-spoiler, sun-stopper, gloom-caster, land-darkener, light-drainer, shiver-giver, misery-maker, kill-joy, window-closer, door-shutter, curtain-drawer, enemy-maker, wind-waiter.
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Lists to poems - to nonsense poems?

Children could draw up lists under different categories, then mix and merge as they wish, to form a poem of whatever shape or form they want. They could also be invited to add to the fun by concocting new words out of those on their lists - adding, mixing, chopping and changing (e.g. drabsob, moodmurk, glumslump, misery-mug, slug-porridge). A bit of experimental word nonsense would serve to lighten the tone (while also developing linguistic dexterity).

How about a blue-sky antidote afterwards? Illustrations would be fun and effective, too.


Kate