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!

2

Genre Studies Series: Part 6 {Poetry}

Other Posts in This Series:

Post 1: The Setup

Post 2: A Foundation with Reading Strategies

Post 3: Mysteries

Post 4: Informational Texts

Post 5: Biographies 
Post 6: Poetry
Post 7: Fables 

During my poetry genre, one of my main goals is to work on reading fluency.  I want to give students some strategies to help them become more fluent readers.  I also want them to see that as they read, read, and re-read a text (or poem), they become more fluent with it.  This will be important as we move on to folktales next. Poetry is also a great tool for teaching so many important literary devices!  As we are reading poems in our classroom, we are also learning to write poems - integration at its best!

We begin our study by reading poems.  I teach my students to think about reading poems - Where should they pause?  What words need to be emphasized?  What words should be read softly?  Students learn to "mark" their poems to practice reading them.  Marking a poem is just as it sounds - drawing marks or letters to remind you of how to read - we use slashes for pauses.  We put one slash for a line break, another slash for punctuation, etc.  Students will put an "s" above words to read softly, or an arrow above a word they want to stretch out.  The options are endless, but they love to add these symbols and create a key for their meanings.  We do several together before they start marking their own poems.  It's fun to see how each child interprets the poems and mark them differently....it lets their personalities shine! :)

This is the perfect unit for pulling out our whisper phones.  You can purchase these phones through many educational outlets, or make your own out of PVC piping as I did (well, actually, the hubs made them).  I spray painted them and numbered them just to lessen the germs being spread.  

Students are amazed at how they can read through one end in a whisper voice and then hear themselves so clearly through the other end!  All of my little poets can be reading at the same exact time without disturbing others!

We use a lot of poems from a lot of different places for our poetry unit - dig through all of your resources and make the most of what you already have!  A couple of my favorite resources include:

...the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You books.  These are oh so perfect for partner fluency practice!!  They come in many different genres that I use with my other genre units, too (fables, tall tales, fairy tales)! <3

....the Take Me Out of the Bathtub series.  These poems are make-your-tummy-hurt funny and the kids eat them up!  Plus, they're written to tunes of familiar songs, making it easy for students to find the rhythm for reading them fluently.  #winwin

As, I mentioned, we're also writing poems as we read them.  I like to expose my students to TONS of poetry styles, while also encouraging them to write freestyle poetry.  

Gooney Bird is So Absurd is the PERFECT read-aloud during this time since Gooney's class is learning some of the same poetry styles as my students!  Of course, in perfectly unique Gooney-fashion, Gooney Bird teaches the class to "warm" their brains with unique hats while writing poetry.

We learn to write many, many styles of poetry and students choose their favorite ones to compile into a poetry anthology.  We publish these into books - what special keepsakes!

As we're reading and writing all of this poetry, we're discovering many literary devices.  We create a lot of craftivities to help cement this devices into our brains - let's face it...they're tricky!  These serve as references on our walls, as well as decorations for our "Poetry Picnic" celebration at the end of our unit.

Alliteration with tongue twisters

Onomatopoeia with poetry pops

Rhyming with watermelon rhymes

 More alliteration with allite-rainbows

Vivid vocabulary with vocab baskets

  Similes with Simile Sandwiches

 Personification blooms with our flowers

Rhyming and/or Syllable review with Sandwich Poems

Metaphors with Metaphoric Family Poems

Whew!  We work hard during this genre study!  Of course, we want to showcase all of our hard work, so we invite our families in for a poetry picnic!  We rearrange all of the tables in our classroom, set out all of our projects and a few little treats, and add some finishing touches!

Students add acrostic poem name tents so families will be able to find their seats easily when they arrive.

We add triangle poems to our napkins at our place settings and we're ready for our big event!

Students each get a chance to be in the spotlight as they read some of the favorite poems they wrote during our study.  Our class also performs some of our favorites (from other authors) as a class.

Then, students return to their own desks to share all of their fun projects and poetry anthologies with their families.  What a fun day of celebrating our learning!

 Units I've created to supplement this genre study may be found below.

The Poetry Styles Unit includes a PowerPoint and individual signs of original  poems I wrote for all of the styles that I teach my students.  These are a great model to use when teaching the poetry styles and also serve as a reference throughout their writing.

I also created a second edition called Poetry Styles II as a special request for an intermediate teacher.  I do not use these styles in my classroom, but if you teach upper-grades, you may find it beneficial for your students.

 Poetry Pizzazz includes all of the fun craftivities for literary devices and also templates for publishing the poetry styles I teach.

Weekly Poem work is my newest addition that I am in LOVE with!  This is actually something I now use all year long to spiral poems and reading strategies with my students.  They will be experts at reading fluency in no time with this year-long practice!

I'll be back soon to share my final three genre studies - folktales (fables, tall tales, and fairy tales).

3

Weekly Poem Work for 2nd Grade {Week 4 Freebie}

Hi friends!  I just wanted to drop in and make sure you didn't miss this week's FREEBIE!  It's a brand new series and to say I'm excited about it is an understatement. :)

I LOVE poetry.  I've always incorporated poetry into my classroom, but usually I find myself scouring my resources at the last minute to try to find a poem for the week.  No more!  I'm officially writing my own poems for each of the school year for next year!  This will ensure that I have them in place ahead of time, that they're a good level for my kiddos (often they're too easy), and that many of them correlate with my units of study!  I love a good seasonal poem like the next teacher, BUT I want to kill two birds with one stone as much as possible. :)

So....let me introduce you to my Weekly Poem Work {Poetry Stations}.  Each month will have 4 original poems and there will be 7 different activities to go along with each poem. 

The poems will come full-page sized and half-page sized and can be altered to work in a poetry notebook.  But, here's a peek at the various activities that are focused on strengthening reading strategies.

Visualizing:  Using words from the poem to make detailed visualizations.

Expression:  Students learn to mark their poems to help them think about how to read expressively.

Making Connections:  Students write and draw about connections they can make to the poem.

Written Response:  Students respond to the poem in writing with their own ideas or writing prompts (lined and unlined versions included).

Grammar Fun:  Students rewrite the poem "MadLib-Style" for parts of speech practice!

Handwriting Practice:  Students select their favorite line from the poem to write in their neatest printing, cursive, and own original "font."

Word Work:  Students create as many words as they can using the letters from a word in the poem.  More points are awarded for bigger words!

So, what are you waiting for?!  Go grab this week's freebie from our shop and leave us some feedback!

PLUS, we're holding a giveaway on our FACEBOOK page where you can win the GROWING BUNDLE for the entire YEAR!!  It ends on Sunday, so hurry!  If you don't win, the growing bundle is a fantastic deal at 25% off the individual monthly prices.  And, THIS WEEK ONLY we have it set for 50% off!  #winwin

2