Book excerpt: Idioms are everywhere whether you break a leg, make a mountain out of a molehill, or let the cat out of the bag and they spice up English in the most delightful way. Mastery of idioms promotes fluency and lively, colorful self-expression. And now, with Exploring Idioms, you can use them to develop your students¿ critical-thinking skills, too. In Exploring Idioms, Valeri Helterbran provides opportunities for middle-grade students to actively work with and connect to 120 common American idioms, as well as more than 300 related idiomatic phrases students can investigate on their own. The critical-thinking activities in Exploring Idioms give you an easy and effective way to begin or end the day, to prepare students to respond to questions about idioms on state assessments, and to help ELL students master this difficult English-language concept while having fun at the same time. Have your students put on their thinking caps and explore the creative world of idioms.