Read great metaphors. Some students have narrow ideas of what metaphors are and often confuse them with similes, which use "like" or "as" to make a comparison. Choose 10 to 20 excellent metaphors from Shakespeare's sonnets, Sylvia Plath's poems, modern poetry books and anthologies. Select a wide range, including some that you may not like but your students will admire.
Ask students to read the separated metaphors, out of context from the whole poem, three times through. Pass around the poems, maybe 5 or 6, from which you gleaned the metaphors. Ask students to read the metaphors in context.
Read the poems allowed, or ask students in the class to read the poems aloud. Ask them to pay special attention to how senses often heighten right before a metaphor, or that a metaphor proceeds heightened sensations.
Read Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene III. Read this part of the play aloud in class or, if time is limited, ask students to read the text at home. Ask students to explore how many metaphors there are for death in this one scene alone. Look for references to death as a creature that sucks life, a monster, a lover and the holder of a "pale flag."
Ask the students to write poems loaded with metaphors. Encourage playfulness, exaggeration and humor. However, truly honor thought-provoking metaphors that work to heal the gap between two seemingly unrelated things. For example, "I am a flower, my stem bent" is OK, but "Music is a hollow ear" is better.