Awesome Alliteration

Target Age Group: 3rd Grade

Objective: Students will learn about showing versus telling by using alliteration through the use
of adjectives so their storytelling and writing will become more engaging.
Students will increase their vocabulary of adjectives as they create a narrative with unique words
that start with certain letters in order to produce alliteration and hook the audience.
Background: Before this lesson students should understand the basic concepts of alliteration and
adjectives. They may not be able to define alliteration, but when it is taught they should
recognize that they have seen it before while reading. The students should also have reading and
writing skills at or near grade level, including the ability to write complete sentences.
Materials: Before the students come into the classroom, the teacher should have the book,
Guess Whos Coming by Jonathan Meres and should have read through it several times, so the
presentation of the book flows, showing the students how effective adjectives using alliteration
can be. Teachers should also prepare strips of paper with various nouns (one on each strip), but
the nouns should not start with the same letter (and should not start with letters R, T, P, D). In
front of the noun there should be a line drawn, to indicate that the student must fill in the blank.
(For example: ____ Pig, ____Mother, ____SingerPutrid Pig, Mature Mother, Savy Singer).
Activity: The first activity will be simply defining alliteration and adjectives with a dictionary
definition because this lesson plan goes deeper than simply teaching what alliteration and
adjectives are. The teacher and students should then repeat the phrase, Awesome Alliteration
several times, then the teacher will explain that awesome is an adjective and that phrase
demonstrates alliteration because both of the words begin with the same sound.
Once they understand the basics, begin reading Guess Whos Coming as a model for the
students, and as the teacher is reading she should emphasize the alliteration through the use of
adjectives. The class will have a discussion on the difference between a jay and a jittery jay, a
polecat and a panicking polecat, and a goose and goggle-eyed goose. Explain that it is showing
versus telling.
Writing Assignment:
Teachers will begin the guided practice, and the teacher will demonstrate the activity by using
the slip of paper and writing an adjective that begins with the same sound as the noun. As the
teacher walks around and guides, students will work in groups of four and each group will have
four slips of paper (see materials). The students will work together to come up with two
adjectives for each noun. If time allows, the slips of paper can be passed around so the students
write on more than four strips of paper.
Once students understand the concepts of alliteration and adjectives they can begin editing their
narrative draft by adding alliteration and adjectives.
Explanation: This lesson will not only allow students to learn the concepts of alliteration and
adjectives, but also allow them to enhance their writing in their narratives and other stories.
From this lesson, students should learn that adjectives and alliteration draw attention to what is

written. As students keep practicing the concepts they learned in this lesson, preferably through
journal entries, they will increase their vocabulary which will help them with reading and other
writing. When students are told to revise their papers they will understand that revision is not
just fixing commas and sentence structure, but it is adding crafts such as alliterative adjectives.
This craft can help students when they write their narrative, but also when they write a college
application, give a speech, or when they are competing in debate.