Search Alliteration Educational Resources

Alliteration—words in a row or are close together that have the same first consonant sound—is a figure of speech that’s fun for kids to learn. They are commonly found in tongue-twisters or poems, but they occur in daily speech as well. With our worksheets and games, teach your student all about this literary stylistic device that will jazz up their writing.

If you’ve every played tongue twisters with your youngster, then they are familiar with alliteration. “She sells seashells by the seashore” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” are probably some of the earliest examples they’ve ever heard.

In addition to tongue twisters, alliteration is common in poems and song lyrics. Alliteration works well in this format because the rhyming lends musicality in the words, making poems or songs easier to memorize. They also give flow and beauty to a piece of writing, something that your student will learn for themselves once they start using this device.

The best way to spot alliteration is to sound out the sentence. That way, your student can hear the identical consonant sounds. Invent alliterative sentence that they can try out, or have them write one themselves.

Examples:
Alice ate an awful lot of apples in August.
Eric eats eggs every evening.
We ate watermelon while waiting for William.

It is important to remember that alliteration does not depend on letters but on sounds, so the sentence “Gina is gorgeous” is not alliterative, while “Glinda is gorgeous” is.

In teaching your students alliteration, point out examples of it in daily life.

Companies use alliteration to create brands that stick in the minds of consumers.

• Dunkin’ Donuts
• PayPal
• Best Buy
• Coca-Cola
• Chuck E. Cheese’s
• Bed Bath & Beyond
• Krispy Kreme

People real and fictional stand out more when they have alliterative names. Writers love to use them to create memorable characters.

• Ronald Reagan
• Sammy Sosa
• Jesse Jackson
• Marilyn Monroe
• Spongebob Squarepants
• Mickey Mouse
• Donald Duck