Alluring Alliteration

                                               

 for Elementary, Middle, High School
  
            Alliteration is one of the first writing tools I teach each year. It’s just too terrific to put on a back burner. All grade levels love tongue twisters, both bumbling when voicing them vociferously and when producing them on paper.  Alliteration is irresistible, even when incredibly annoying. 
    All year long I will ask the students to add alliteration— to odes, to description, to persuasive papers for memorability, to advertisements, to dialogues. Vocabularies grow, brainstorming blooms, and silliness agonizes and shines. 
    I give a handout, front and back plastered with twisters. I have 3 handouts, so I can use a different one each year for 3 years. One has traditional verse on it, like Peter Piper and Betty Botter. The other two list sentences, such as Toy boat. Toy boat. Toy boat. and A proper copper coffee pot.  We read the handout aloud, a verse or sentence per student, which is fully fun for all. Then we try to write one together on the board.
    I use a couple of different exercises for alliteration. Here’s a few to choose from for elementary writers:
1.   Write the longest sentence you can using words that start with the same letter.  A, T, and S are the easiest.  e.g. An aardvark ate Allen’s avocados. or Saturday, Silly Susan sat silently, sipping sarsaparilla soda.
2.   Write the longest sentence you can using words that start with just 2 letters. e.g. An afternoon class can always alliterate continually, causing craziness and absurdity.
3.   Write-around. This is fun for middle school too. With a write-around, each student signs his name on the bottom of the paper. He chooses a letter to use and writes that at the top. (My example below is a B.) Then he starts with #1. He passes it to be added on by the student to his right, who writes #2 prompt, and so on. When the prompts are complete, the paper is returned to the original owner, who creates a complete sentence or two out of all the additions.  This one can have other words added that don’t start with the main letter.
    1. Who: Character first and last name.   Brenda Bobolink
    2. What did the character do?  begged for banana brownies
    3. When?   before breakfast
    4. Where?  by a bayou
    5. Why?  because bananas taste better than broccoli
    6. How?  bravely

            Before breakfast by a bayou, Brenda Bobolink begged bravely for banana brownies, because bananas taste better than broccoli.

         For high schoolers in British Literature and for middle schoolers when I teach them about Old English, I use alliterative epics as the writing exercise. It works well with Beowulf, which is the first reading assignment in British Lit. I hand them an excerpt of Beowulf, showing them the 3 alliterations per line and explaining the storyline.

BEOWULF,   excerpt


Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,
leader beloved, and long he ruled
in fame with all folk, since his father had gone
away from the world, till awoke an heir,
haughty Healfdene, who held through life,
sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad.
Then, one after one, there woke to him,
to the chieftain of clansmen, children four:
Heorogar, then Hrothgar, then Halga brave;
and I heard that—was—’s queen,
the Heathoscylfing’s helpmate dear.
To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades. It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
ia master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it, then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men.


Then I give them a funny alliterative epic that I found online, Beocat: 

Grendel's Dog, from Beocat

Brave Beocat, brood-kit of Ecgthmeow,
Hearth-pet of Hrothgar in whose high halls
He mauled without mercy many fat mice,
Night did not find napping nor snack-feasting.
The wary war-cat, whiskered paw-wielder,
Bearer of the burnished neck-belt, gold-braided collar band,
Feller of fleas fatal, too, to ticks,
The work of wonder-smiths, woven with witches' charms,
Sat upon the throne-seat his ears like sword-points
Upraised, sharp-tipped, listening for peril-sounds,
When he heard from the moor-hill howls of the hell-hound,
Gruesome hunger-grunts of Grendel's Great Dane,
Deadly doom-mutt, dread demon-dog.
Then boasted Beocat, noble battle-kitten,
Bane of barrow-bunnies, bold seeker of nest-booty:
"If hand of man unhasped the heavy hall-door
And freed me to frolic forth to fight the fang-bearing fiend,
I would lay the whelpling low with lethal claw-blows;
Fur would fly and the foe would taste death-food.
But resounding snooze-noise, stern slumber-thunder,
Nose-music of men snoring mead-hammered in the wine-hall,
Fills me with sorrow-feeling for Fate does not see fit
To send some fingered folk to lift the firm-fastened latch
That I might go grapple with the grim ghoul-pooch."
Thus spoke the mouse-shredder, hunter of hall-pests,
Short-haired Hrodent-slayer, greatest of the pussy-Geats.

-- From Poetry for Cats, by Henry Beard.
Translated by the Editor's cat.


     Next we write a short epic together on the board, using 3 alliterations per line. And their homework assignment is to write an alliterative epic, at least 12-16 lines long (or longer, of course).  Here are three examples by my classes.

 Amazing Adam, the accountant,
 Manages a menagerie of much money.
 He thought skimming some shouldn’t hurt,
 As he pined for a purple pogo stick.
        ____

 Hefty, heroic hydra of Frankleburg,
The neon, knight-slayer Nolan.
In one perfect puny hand he holds a pencil
Writing hilarious haiku about himself.
          ____

Intelligent  I.D.K. is invisible.
Super slick and sly are her movements,
While eating a whole watermelon.
She collects crazy kites
And flies far, far away
To her perfect place, positioned
In the misty, mountainous middle of nowhere,
Baking delicious blueberry biscuits,
Giving them to green, girly gorillas.