The eNotes Blog 31 Metaphor Activities for YourClassroom

31 Metaphor Activities for YourClassroom Metaphor is arguably the most ubiquitous and layered of literary devices. Expressing images, emotions, actions, experiences, and nuances through direct and indirect comparisons, metaphors enrich a text and reveal the deeper significance of what is being described. However, practicing this in the classroom can be a challenge. Which texts should you work with? Which examples best show the writers use of metaphor? At , were committed to providing you with quality classroom activities to help you and your students expand your appreciation of literary texts. Thats why were now offering metaphor activities, in addition to our lesson plans, as part of our Teacher Subscription. Each activity gives your students opportunities to examine and analyze metaphors from specific texts. We provide examples of metaphors from each play, poem, or short story for your students to examine and analyze. (And we also include an answer key!) Well continue to create more in the future, but for now, enjoy these 31 metaphor activities to use in your classroom. 1. Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen In â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth,† Wilfred Owens descriptive imagery and evocative metaphors praise soldiers’ sacrifices and condemn the destructive nature of war. Owen conveys his themes through metaphorical language. 2. Araby by James Joyce James Joyces â€Å"Araby† employs a rich array of metaphors to convey the young protagonists evolving experiences of delight, desire, and disenchantment as he resolves to go to the market at Araby to find a gift for a girl he fancies. 3. A Valediction: Forbidding Morning by John Donne John Donne wrote this poem for his wife, Anne, shortly before leaving the country. Donne describes their unflagging marital bond with elaborate metaphors of death, astronomy, alchemy, gilding, and the sweeping movements of a drafting compass. 4. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville One of Herman Melvilles best-known works, â€Å"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street† follows the tale of an enigmatic copyist named Bartleby, drawing on an eclectic range of metaphors to render this surreal Wall Street parable. 5. Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson â€Å"Because I Could Not Stop for Death† is one of Emily Dickinson’s signature poems. Dickinson uses unforgettable metaphors to approach her weighty subject matter- the speakers carriage ride with Death- with style and subtlety. 6. Bright Star! by John Keats Throughout John Keatss sonnet â€Å"Bright Star!,† the speaker uses metaphors to engage his environment, activating the stars, sea, and snow as actors in his interior drama as he expresses his desire to be as unchanging and eternal as the north star. 7. Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold penned â€Å"Dover Beach† while on honeymoon with his wife, and, indeed, the speaker of the poem addresses his â€Å"love† as he looks out over the shores of Dover, employing a range of metaphorical language to portray his vision of a desolate, unimaginable future. 8. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray Arguably the finest elegy in English literature, Thomas Gray’s â€Å"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard† uses metaphor to describe the setting, to contrast the lives of the poor with those of the rich and powerful, and to depict death as a shared experience. 9. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti At first glance, Christina Rossetti’s poem â€Å"Goblin Market† takes the form of a cautionary tale for children. However, Rossetti’s use of metaphorical language intimates deeper meanings to be gleaned from this fairy-tale parable about a walk in the woods that takes an uncanny turn. 10. Macbeth (Act I, Scene III) by William Shakespeare In act I, scene III of Shakespeares Macbeth, Banquo and Macbeth hear the witches prophecy and are left to discuss what happened after the witches depart, using a wide range of metaphors to make sense of the prophecies and the revelation that Macbeth is now the Thane of Cawdor. 11. Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield Katherine Mansfield’s short story â€Å"Miss Brill† unfolds as a stream of Miss Brill’s consciousness, employing metaphors that offer insight into her character and hint at just how deeply she longs for a connection to those around her. 12. Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats In John Keatss â€Å"Ode on a Grecian Urn,† the speaker studies the figures and scenes painted along the sides of an ancient Greek urn. The richness and subtlety of Keats’s metaphors convey a connection to what is truly timeless in human life. 13. Ode on Melancholy by John Keats John Keats describes the relationship between sadness and joy in â€Å"Ode on Melancholy.† Keats’s metaphors express how melancholy leads to experiences of both joy and beauty, suggesting the necessary role of sorrow in life. 14. Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† follows the thoughts of Keatss speaker as he struggles with the burden of mortality, seeking strategies to cope with it- oblivion, revelry, poetic bliss- through rich, often allusive metaphors that convey his flights of imagination and storms of emotion. 15. Patterns by Amy Lowell From the first stanza, Amy Lowell’s â€Å"Patterns† follows a conceit- her restrictive dress and the stifling social conventions of her milieu confine her life to a specific pattern- and employs descriptive metaphors to expound upon her narrator’s emotions. 16. Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare Shakespeare’s best-known poems are his 154 sonnets, the majority of which focus on the speaker’s love for a young man. Against this backdrop, the speaker in Sonnet 60 develops vivid metaphors to confront the destructive and intractable force of time. 17. Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1921 poem â€Å"Spring† turns the typical pastoral poem on end with its unsentimental attitude, conveying its themes and dark humor through memorable metaphors such as â€Å"April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.† 18. Spring-Watching Pavilion by Ho Xuan Huong In â€Å"Spring-Watching Pavilion,† Ho Xuan Huong takes up one of her essential themes: the critique of organized religion. Huong uses vivid metaphors to convey the ubiquity and futility of religions, whose wave-like bells render â€Å"heaven upside-down in sad puddles.† 19. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving Washington Irvings â€Å"Rip Van Winkle† follows the titular Rip as he wanders off into the woods, falls into a deep sleep, and awakens twenty years later. Irving brings his full facility for metaphor to enrich his descriptions of the landscapes and the lively people who inhabit them. 20. The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy’s â€Å"The Darkling Thrush† is a poem about historical change, and the speaker uses metaphors to imbue the scenery with deeper historical and cultural implications as he stares out at a barren winter landscape. 21. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Poe’s â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† is built on metaphors, particularly that of the â€Å"House of Usher,† which refers to the house itself and to the family therein. As the narrator observes, the Ushers’ descent into madness mirrors the decay and collapse of the estate around them. 22. The Fish by Marianne Moore Moore’s â€Å"The Fish† employs startling images, rich metaphors, and original verse forms to draw unexpected connections and push our imaginations into fresh territory. The speaker inspects a tidal scene, studying the marine life and the surf with a curiosity tinged with melancholy. 23. The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield Katherine Mansfield brings subtle layers of metaphor and nuance into all of her work, and â€Å"The Garden Party† is characteristically imbued with well-crafted metaphors that display Mansfield’s breadth of knowledge and sharpness of eye. 24. The Lady with the Pet Dog by Anton Chekhov Chekhov’s short story â€Å"The Lady with the Pet Dog† is a love story about two unhappily married people who find one another while on vacation in Yalta. After Anna leaves, Gurov can’t keep her out of his mind, employing metaphors to express his feelings about the affair and his love for Anna. 25. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot’s poem â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† uses metaphors to transform the streets of London into an unsettling dreamscape where evening is an â€Å"etherised patient† and fog is a prowling yellow cat. 26. The Lucy Poems by William Wordsworth Wordsworth’s five Lucy poems focus on the speaker’s love for a beautiful young English woman and employ numerous elements of Romanticism, including expressive metaphors that emphasize Lucy’s beauty, the beauty of nature, and the presence of death. 27. The Maldive Shark by Herman Melville Herman Melville’s humorous poem teases and satirizes a shark, using metaphor to bring an imaginative and sardonic voice to the speakers critique of the shark’s monstrous appearance, laziness, and lack of intelligence. 28. The Moon by Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley’s â€Å"The Moon† is a lyrical description of the rising moon that uses metaphor to convey the moon’s dissatisfaction and restlessness as it roams the heavens, ultimately failing to acquire a distinct identity or end its searching. 29. The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant â€Å"The Necklace† by Guy de Maupassant depicts the life of a charming young woman who dreams of luxuries beyond her means. Maupassant laces the short story with metaphors that bring the characters- their desires, misunderstandings, and struggles- to life. 30. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge In â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,† Samuel Taylor Coleridge weaves a fantastic tale that features a series of dramatic events, many of them eerie and supernatural. Coleridge’s poem employs striking imagery and metaphor to depict the events that forever change the mariner’s life. 31. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† features many of the Poes signature elements- a gothic setting, a deranged narrator, and a suspenseful plot- to create a sense of horror. As the narrators hallucinations take hold, Poe’s use of metaphor emphasizes the narrator’s insanity and the uncanny atmosphere in which the plot unfolds.

What Is the Endoplasmic Reticulum What Does It Do

What Is the Endoplasmic Reticulum What Does It Do SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips If you’re getting ready for the AP Biology exam, then you’re probably spending quite a bit of time studying cell structure. But keeping all the structures straight and understanding each one’s function can be confusing! That’s why we’re breaking down cell structures for you, starting with the endoplasmic reticulum, or ER. In this article, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about the endoplasmic reticulum, including how it functions in a cell. We’ll even break down the differences between the rough endoplasmic reticulum and the smooth endoplasmic reticulum! Ready? Then let’s get started! A Quick Introduction to Cell Structure The endoplasmic reticulum is an essential part of a cell. In your biology class, you probably learned that cells are the building blocks of all life...including humans! Obviously, that makes cells super important, which is why it’s also important to understand how they function. Because plants and animals are complex creatures, the structure of a cell is complex, too. Each cell is made up of many individual parts, each of which has a job within the cell itself! Some help keep everything in one place (like the cell membrane), some produce energy to power the cell (the mitochondria), and there are even parts that help keep the cell clean (lysosomes)! These different structures found within cells are called organelles. The endoplasmic reticulum is an organelle that can be found in both eukaryotic (animal) and prokaryotic (plant) cells. Just keep in mind that not all cells have endoplasmic reticulum! For example, red blood cells don’t have endoplasmic reticuli, even though they’re an important part of animal biology! Endoplasmic Reticulum Definition The endoplasmic reticulum is defined as an organelle that is made up of a series of phospholipid membranes. In fact, the membranes that make up the endoplasmic reticulum can account for half of a cell’s total membrane structure in animal cells! These membranes are called cisternae, are shaped like tubes or sacs, and are continuous with the outer membrane of the cell’s nucleus. That’s a fancy way of saying that the endoplasmic reticulum is attached to the nucleus itself. Endoplasmic Reticulum Function Now let’s talk a little bit more about how an endoplasmic reticulum functions. In general, the endoplasmic reticulum helps with the synthesis, folding, modification, and transport of proteins and lipids. The endoplasmic reticulum does this through ribosomes that are attached to its membrane walls. (We’ll talk more about how this works a little later). The endoplasmic reticulum also stores calcium and releases it when the cell needs it. In fact, many of the proteins and lipids made by the endoplasmic reticulum are used by other organelles in the cell. One of the best ways to understand- and remember!- what the endoplasmic reticulum does is to think of it like a factory. In a manufacturing plant, people take raw materials and make it into something new and usable, which they then ship to other stores, manufacturers, and suppliers around the world. Just like a real-world factory, the endoplasmic reticulum builds the â€Å"products† a cell needs to function, then â€Å"ships† them to where they need to go, when they need to go there. CFCF/WikimediaCommons Endoplasmic Reticulum Appearance So what does the endoplasmic reticulum look like, exactly? Well, do you remember the mazes that you could find in coloring books when you were a kid? The endoplasmic reticulum looks a lot like that! The cisternae stretch out and away from the cell nucleus in a series of folds and tubes, and they extend throughout the cell almost like a highway system. So when you’re looking at a cell diagram, look for the maze-like structure that’s attached to the cell nucleus. That’s the endoplasmic reticulum! You might notice that cell diagrams often picture some areas of the endoplasmic reticulum with bumps, while other sections look smooth. That’s because endoplasmic reticulum is actually comprised of two pieces: the rough endoplasmic reticulum and the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. Knowing how these different areas work is important to understanding the function of the endoplasmic reticulum as a whole. CFCF/Wikimedia Commons Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum The rough endoplasmic reticulum, or RER, gets its name from the ribosomes embedded in its surface...which make it look rough! The rough endoplasmic reticulum is situated closest to the nucleus- in fact, it’s attached to the nuclear envelope- so that molecules can move directly between the membranes. The ribosomes that are attached to the walls of the rough endoplasmic reticulum function just like free ribosomes would. That means that they synthesize proteins, which provide the energy needed for a cell to operate. The process of creating proteins is called translation. One the ribosomes have synthesized a protein, they are â€Å"labeled† with a specific final destination. Some proteins are sent to the Golgi apparatus, while others are secreted into the cell exterior or kept within the membrane of the rough endoplasmic reticulum itself. There are certain proteins that are sent into the space within the rough endoplasmic reticulum. This space, which is also called the lumen, is where certain proteins are folded, modified, and assembled. Some of these proteins will have sugar groups added to them to form glycoproteins. Likewise, some of these new proteins will be transported out of the endoplasmic reticulum, while others will stay inside the endoplasmic reticulum to perform functions there. The lumen is also where the endoplasmic reticulum does its â€Å"quality control.† When misfolded or otherwise incorrect proteins accumulate in the lumen, the unfolded protein response (or UPR) is triggered. This tells the cell to reduce the amount of protein its producing while enhancing the endoplasmic reticulum’s protein-folding ability. If the problem doesn’t correct itself, it triggers apoptosis, or programmed cell death. One super cool note: the ribosomes of the rough endoplasmic reticulum aren’t permanently attached to the membrane itself. That means that new ribosomes can detach and attach depending on the proteins the cell needs! CFCF/Wikimedia Commons Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum Unlike the rough endoplasmic reticulum, the smooth endoplasmic reticulum doesn’t have any ribosomes attached to it. That makes it look smooth- which is how it gets its name! The smooth endoplasmic reticulum’s function is almost exclusively to make lipids, like phospholipids and cholesterol. How these lipids are used depends on the cell type. Lipids can be used to create new cell membranes, create hormones, and store energy. The smooth endoplasmic reticulum also helps detoxify the cell by converting toxic organic chemicals into safer, water soluble products. Fun fact: when there are lots of toxins present, the smooth endoplasmic reticulum can double its surface area to help clear them out. It will then return to normal size after the toxins have been removed. Liver cells have large amounts of smooth endoplasmic reticulum for this very purpose! Finally, there’s a type of specialized smooth endoplasmic reticulum called the sarcoplasmic reticulum. The sarcoplasmic reticulum is found in muscle cells and is used to store calcium ions that muscles need to function. When muscles experience sustained activity, the sarcoplasmic reticulum can release the stored calcium ions to help the muscles function. Additional Resources If you’ve read through this guide and still would like to know more about how the endoplasmic reticulum works, here are a few other resources that you can check out. Khan Academy Khan Academy has tons of free resources on all sorts of topics including cell structure. Their video on the endoplasmic reticulum is really helpful, and they have articles about it on their website, too. The British Society for Cell Biology The British Society for Cell Biology is a British non-profit organization dedicated to advancing cell biology research, which includes sharing knowledge and information. One of the ways they do this is through educational material, which they share on their website. Their softCell e-Learning portal has tons of good information about all the organelles of a cell, including the endoplasmic reticulum. CrashCourse Who said studying has to be boring? The CrashCourse channel on YouTube- hosted by none other than John and Hank Green of VlogBrothers fame- is all about creating fun and informational educational content. Hank’s series on animal cells is a great resource, and the fourth video in the series (Eukaryopolis!) gives you an overview of the endoplasmic reticulum. What’s Next? Need to brush up on more than just the endoplasmic reticulum before tackling the AP Biology exam? Grabbing a workbook or textbook might be your best bet. Here’s a curated list of the best AP Biology books to help you study harder and smarter. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the AP Biology exam, you’re not alone. There are lots of students who find this test tricky! That’s why we’ve put together a complete AP Biology review guide. It breaks down all of the topics that might appear on the exam, so you can figure out exactly what you need to study. (It also includes some great study tips, too!) The best way to figure out if you’re prepared for the AP Biology test is to take a practice exam. Here’s a list of every AP Biology practice test available. And the best news? They’re free!