Tongue Twisters & More {All About Alliteration}

Since it is poetry month, I thought I would share a bit about how I teach alliteration.  Teaching literary devices is probably one of my favorite things to do, but they can be tricky for the little ones!  That means I provide a lot of different kinds of activities to help the concepts stick!

Here are just a few of my favorites with alliteration.

Tongue Twisters

Tongue twisters are a favorite!  I love sharing some with my students and have them try to say them three times fast to the class.  We usually end up doubled over in laughter. :)  Once students are familiar with tongue twisters, we set out to write our own.

We publish them on the tongues of these cute displays!  No template - we just trace lids for the circle faces and I free-cut tongues out of the large construction paper.

Poem Practice

We read the Jack Prelutsky poem, "Bleezer's Ice Cream" and I ask students to identify the flavors that alliterate, like checkerberry cheddar chew or cotton candy carrot custard.  This poem is in the book The New Kid on the Block and it's an all-time favorite poetry book that I highly recommend! {affiliate link below}



There are a few ways to access this poem online if you can't get your hands on the book.  Here is a YouTube reading of the poem.

You can also play the musical version of the poem being sang by Natalie Merchant here.

After analyzing the poem, I put students in partners and let them create their own wacky ice cream flavors that alliterate!  You can download the freebie below to do this activity with your students.

{Download Freebie Here}

Games Galore

Games are so important in the primary classroom.  We play games every single day.  Multiple times a day.  For alliteration, we play an old fashioned car game.  It's great, not only for alliteration, but for listening and memory, too!

The items being taken on the trip must all begin with the same initial sound as the destination.  To play, I read the card, for example, "I am going to Paris and I'm taking a parachute."  The next student in the circle would repeat my item and add one of his own, for example..."I am going to Paris and I'm taking a parachute and a piano."  The sentence keeps getting passed around the circle with each student repeating it and adding another "p" word.  They are amazed when it make it all the way around the circle!

I also teach students how to play it with just two players - perfect for the car ride home from school (sorry parents)!  One student starts it, and it keeps alternating until one player either can't think of an item to add or can't remember an item.  What fun practicing alliteration!

Clever Crafts

Since we study literary devices during the spring, we love to decorate the hall with clever craftivities.  For alliteration, we create "Alliterainbows."  Students use planning pages and brainstorm parts of speech to alliterate with each color and then use these ideas to write their own sentences with alliteration on each color band of the rainbow.  By now, they are amazing at alliterating! :)

Story Surprises

Throughout our study, I always throw in a couple of surprise read-alouds!  These are a couple of my favorites for alliteration. The first book I read is The Little Book of Alliterations.  It is a simple alphabet book with one phrase per page.  It's perfect to read before having students write tongue twisters.  The next book I read closer to the end of our study.  It's called One Smug Slug and it is written in story format.  The story uses as many "s" words as possible.  They enjoy trying to figure out what the smug slug is climbing throughout the story and are always surprised when he is eaten at the end!  But, their favorite part of the book is that there is a hidden "S" somewhere on each page - some are super tricky and they love searching for them.

{affiliate links for books}

I hope this post gave you a few new ideas for teaching alliteration!