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At the outset of the poetry unit I'll be doing this fall, students will be discussing the devices of alliteration and assonance. These are 10th graders, and I'd really appreciate some ideas about how to get the concepts across to them. One thing I've considered is a Venn Diagram with the two devices in each "bubble." Your thoughts, please...

What about tongue twisters? They're full of alliteration. Here are a couple of web sites where you can find them:

http://www.fun-with-words.com/tongue_twisters.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8136/tonguetwisters.html

In reply to #1:

Last year in my class I began with alliteration.  We made up rhymes using nothing but alliteration.  (Peter Piper picked...)  After spending a few class sessions on writing and sharing that I went on to assonance.  I let them pick words out of the dictionary that had vowels that rhymed and then we wrote silly poems using the words that rhymed.

At the end of the unit, I took the assessment from their own poems and rhymes.  It takes some time and maybe some practice but I am using it again this year.

When teaching assonance I have them focus on rhyme at first: The fat cat sat on the black mat.  Once they know to pick a vowel and go with it, they are more secure in branching out.

For alliteration I make them pick a letter of the alphabet and brainstorm 10-15 words that start with that letter. Then I have them pick from their word pool and create a sentence. Again, once they do this with 2 or 3 letters it becomes second nature.

I think that the real difficult task isn't having kids identify or use alliteration and assonance, but teaching them how to ANALYZE how its use furthers the piece--does it provide more flow? add an onomatopeoic effect? When you say "the wind whipped wildly through the widow's hair", what is the effect of the alliteration?? It's imitating the sound of the wind makes as it whips through her hair--this is where kids get stuck.

Maybe you should give them poems that have applied these techniques before

How about trying these poems:

Invictus

The Highwayman

Anthem for Doomed Youth