Alliteration and Onomatopoeia, by Lee Bennett Hopkins

These fun poetic devices will enhance your young writers' knowledge of poetic forms

Alliteration and onomatopoeia (on-eh-ma-toe-pee-ah) are two poetic devices poets use to craft their work. Once children are acquainted with the forms, they'll quickly come to recognize these techniques in published poems. Adding these terms to young writers' vocabularies will enhance their knowledge of poetic forms.

Alliteration
Alliteration is repetition of the same letter at the beginning of a succession of words. Mother Goose rhymes such as "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," or "Betsy Botter bought some butter," will immediately give children an understanding of alliteration. You can also share this limerick:

The tutor who tooted a flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to their tutor,
Is it harder to toot or
To tutor two tooters to toot?

Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is making or forming a word or phrase by imitating a sound. Use a series of words and/or phrases to have children identify the subject being sounded out. Examples include: bow-wow (dog), ding dong (bell) and choo-choo (a train).

Other onomatopoeic words are crackle, clang and creak. Students can make a list of other word sounds. When lists are completed, they can create a poem using one or several words from their list.

Reference shelf
The Racecar Alphabet by Brian Floca (Atheneum, 2003). The race is rapid in this entertaining picture book depicting a day at a car race. Alliteration is the keynote where, "Curves across the course cause cars to careen and to crowd and come close to colliding," and "Wheels — when worn and wet — wobble willy-nilly, lead to weaving, whacking walls."

A Rumpus of Rhymes: A Book of Noisy Poems by Bobbi Katz (Dutton, 2001). Onomatopoeia abounds in this dazzling collection where a washing machine says, "Glubita, GLUB, Babba-da-swaba, Blub-blub-a dubba" and a school bus is heard to "be bee beep, muff muff chuff, toot toot toot, chuff! chuff!" The verses beg to be read aloud with perhaps a chorus or two booming out the many noisy words.

Lee Bennett Hopkins is a celebrated poet and anthologist. His recent collection is Wonderful Words: Poems About Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening (Simon & Schuster, 2004).