Alliteration Activity – Free Printable

I have been lucky enough to be part of the amazing Soar to Success Summit again this year, and one of the panel discussions I was a part of was about alliteration. Alliteration is when a series of words begin with the same sound; developing these skills helps children develop the ability to differentiate and discriminate between sounds. When children are playing with sounds, they are learning to discriminate them, which is a foundational skill needed for literacy later on. There are so many fun ways to work on alliteration, and it’s integral to phonological awareness development. I like to teach about letter sounds in all different ways in my class, and this simple printable is one tool I use in a few different methods for developing alliteration skills.

Gather your materials. First, let’s turn these free printables into materials you can teach with. You will need this free printable –> PRINT HERE , a laminator if you wish, some magnets, scissors, and a cookie sheet. Please note there are 25 sets, no set for X sound, and I only made cards for the hard sounds and the short vowel sounds. There is no need to master alliteration for every phoneme systematically. We are playing with these sounds, it’s more about training our ears and brains to differentiate.

Laminate the printables, and cut along the lines. Now you should have long strips of three images that all have the same initial sound and one image that matches but is not attached. Add magnets.

Time to play.

For small group and free choice, place a few cookie sheets on your rug or a table. Put three long strips on the sheet and the smaller pieces on the table. Invite children to say each word out loud and then look for the missing image to complete the line. “apple, ant, astronaut….ambulance!”. Children SHOULD be saying these words out loud so they can hear them. This is a lesson in sounds, not letters; we aren’t asking them to find the thing that starts with letter a; we are asking them to find the thing that starts with the same sound. That is important.

In a group, I would offer students two choices. The reason I do this with a group is that even in my small class of 13, my students have drastically different abilities. By making two choices, hearing the difference between ambulance and donut is clear and easy to succeed. Children that have mastered this aren’t bored and can act as scaffolds for children who are still learning. Of course, in a group, everyone should be using big voices so we can hear the sounds. This isn’t a time for a nice quiet classroom!