Literary Terms
Review and Activity
Warm-Up
• Take a packet from the front desk
• Begin filling in the words that you know the definition for and any examples you
can fill in.
• You will have a quiz on this __________________
Terms We Should Know
• Simile
• Character
• Metaphor
• Protagonist
• Personification
• Antagonist
• Plot
• Setting
• Episode
• Hyperbole
• Onomatopoeia
Terms we should know, but have not
reviewed together
• Dialogue
• The talking between characters; usually found in quotation marks
• Motive
• The reason behind a character’s actions
• Theme
• The moral of the story or the message the author intended
• Synonym
• Words with similar meanings
Terms we should know, but have not
reviewed together
• Antonyms
• Words that have the opposite meaning
• Homophones
• Words that sound the same but have different spellings and different
meanings
• Conflict
• A problem in the story
• Resolution
• The portion of the story in which the conflict is resolved.
Terms that may be new
• Irony
• When something happens that is the opposite of what is expected
• Imagery
• The use of words to create a picture in the reader’s mind
• Foreshadowing
• An event in the story that gives a hint about something that will
happen later in the story.
• Genre
• Type of literature based on style, form, and content
• Examples:
Project
• You will be assigned 3 or 4 terms.
• You will create a mini poster on an large index card about your literary terms.
• On the card you will need to include
• The literary term bolded
• A picture describing the word
• On the back, you will write the definition of the word.
• We will be hanging these up so please make them neat, legible, and useful.