Sample Lesson Plan # 1- Alliteration
Objectives:
The students will be able to:
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1. recognize alliteration in a poem or prose.
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2. write an example of alliteration (the repetition of the same beginning sound) by adding appropriate words to a given noun.
Materials Needed:
Copies of tongue twisters, poems with alliterative lines, and prose lines with alliteration.
Vocabulary:
Alliteration, repetition. Teachers may also find it helpful to reinforce the concepts of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb.
Procedures:
Present students with several tongue twisters. Teacher: Who can repeat these rhymes?The children should be given ample enough time to try their hand at this.
Teacher: Why is it so hard to say these lines?Students will realize that it is because of the repetition of sounds. Teacher: So repeating sounds can be funny. Look at these descriptions from a story in our book. How did the author use these phrases? Did he want to be funny? If not, then what was the reason for using alliteration?
An example of a suitable story would be “Sailing” from the fourth grade reader “Feast Your Eyes.” The story concerns a family traveling along the prairie to a new life in the West. Here the writer has descriptive expressions such as “red rocks of the South,” “endless grass,” (please note that alliteration can occur at the end of words too) and “one of the hawks rose higher and higher.” The alliteration is not for amusement, but to add to the description.
Teacher: Now that we have seen what alliteration is and how it can be used in different ways by a writer, let’s see if we can’t make up some alliterative descriptions together.
On the board write four or five nouns such as breeze, house, lion, snake, and neighbor. Have students suggest words that can be added to these nouns to make an alliterative effect(noisy nosey neighbor). After seeing the different uses of alliteration it would be time for students to work in cooperative groups in which they would be given a list of a series of nouns.The group would be asked to add descriptive words, which would result in a review of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. After giving students fifteen to twenty minutes to complete the assignment it would be good to meet together as a class and have the group recorders share their responses. The teacher might list all these on a chart so students could see the endless possibilities.
Follow Up Activities:
Add tongue twisters and alliterative poems to the library corner. Give students a chance to record themselves saying some of these phrases on tape. Encourage students to try alliteration in their own writing.