Alliteration Teaching Resources

Activate an alliteration adventure in your classroom with printable worksheets, interactive activities and more teaching resources created by teachers for your poetry lesson plans!

This curriculum-aligned collection of alliterative resources has been thoroughly reviewed and carefully curated by the expert ELA teachers on the Teach Starter team. That means every printable and digital resource is ready to use in your classroom!

Want to learn more about adding alliteration to your classroom agenda? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!

What Is Alliteration? A Kid-Friendly Definition

Alliteration is one of the fun poetry devices that can unlock a love of poems in your students, but how do you explain it to kids? Try this kid-friendly definition!

Alliteration is words that start with the same sound in a sentence or phrase.

It's important to make clear to students that the key word in this alliteration definition is sound, not letter.

"The giant golf ball," would not be an example of alliteration because the "g" in giant is soft while the "g" in golf is hard — creating two entirely different sounds.

Alliteration Examples for Students

Alliteration is a writer's figurative language used to create mood, tone or emphasis. It tends to create memorable sounds in speech or writing and can add a hint of musicality to language, which makes it more interesting and engaging.

What better way to illustrate this than with some fun examples?

When introducing this concept, a great example to start of with is the common alliterative sentence, "Silly Sally sells seashells by the seashore." You'll notice that almost all words in the sentence start with the "s" sound.

Of course, you don't have to stop there! This fun figurative language type often pops up in famous speeches, poems and nursery rhymes — among other places.

Tongue twisters — a great tool for kids to strengthen the muscles you use to speak — are always a hit with students when teaching alliteration, as they're fun to practice!

Here are some of our favorite tongue twisters that double as alliteration examples for students:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?
Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said the butter's bitter.
Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.
A proper copper coffee pot.

Alliteration vs. Assonance

Alliteration is focused on the initial consonant sounds in words. But what about vowel sounds? They often repeat in sentences, stanzas of poems, songs and more. So what is that an example of?

Repeating the same vowel sound patterns close to one another in writing to create an effect is called assonance.

For example, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" is an example of assonance because of the repeated "ai" sound in "rain," "Spain," "mainly," and "plain."

It's close to alliteration but not quite the same!

Here are some fun examples of assonance:

She sees cheese.
Eleven benevolent elephants.

Alliteration vs. Consonance

But wait, what if you use the same consonant sound over and over in writing, but it appears in the middle of words rather than as the initial sound? That's not alliteration, either!

The repetition of consonant sounds in the middle or end of words —rather than just at the beginning — is called consonance.

Alliteration is often used for its poetic or musical effect, and consonance is too. But consonance is also often used to create a subtle rhyme or rhythm within a sentence or phrase.

Here are some fun examples of consonance: