Point out examples of rhetorical devices in the illustrations in picture books. For example, a Halloween book might have a sentence like "The tree branches grasped at the boy's coat" and a picture of a tree with eyes reaching for a running boy. Explain to your class that this is personification -- the eyes on the tree help illustrate that the tree is doing something human.
Hand out picture books to your students. Tell them to read the stories and find examples of rhetorical devices in the illustrations. They might find uses of personification, metaphor, hyperbole or onomatopoeia.
Have the students share their findings with the class and explain how the pictures include rhetorical devices. Tell them to read the sentences aloud, so the other students can hear the rhetorical devices in the words as well as see them in the pictures.
Read aloud examples of rhetorical devices in short stories without illustrations. Ask the students to describe what a picture of the imagery would look like.
Introduce rhetorical devices that cannot be illustrated, such as alliteration and repetition. Explain that these are sound devices, not picture devices. Read aloud lines from children's stories that feature such devices, and ask the students why they think the writer included them.
Assign students homework in which they write their own short stories using rhetorical devices. Allow them to illustrate any devices that can be represented in pictures. Visual students may lean toward personification and onomatopoeia, which they can draw, while auditory learners may employ alliteration and repetition, which they can hear.
Give each student time to present his story to the class. Let the class spot and identify the rhetorical devices in their classmates' work.