By grade six, most students can speak effectively, but they may often struggle with alliterative phrases, especially if the majority of the words begin with the same consonant sound. Use this difficulty to teach your students about the importance of slowing down and focusing on what they're saying when they speak. Have them practice saying alliterative sentences, such as "A broad Bostonian bought bricks by the bay." Give students a list of words beginning with the same sound and ask them to use the words in a sentence; the student who properly repeats the sentence the greatest number of times wins.
Have each student compose and write as many alliterative sentences as they can, with each sentence containing at least five similar consonant sounds. After one minute, have them stop writing and determine which student wrote the most sentences. Alternatively, ask two students to sit at the front of the room and write an alliterative sentence that you give them. The fastest writer of the correct sentence is allowed to stay seated and compete against another student, while the other student returns to his seat; continue until one student is left seated at the front of the class.
Use an alliterative reading game to warn students about the pitfalls of reading too fast. Give small groups each a paragraph filled with alliteration; ask each student in the group to be responsible for reading at least one sentence in the paragraph. One at a time, ask each group to read their paragraph; the winning group is the one who reads their paragraph with the fewest errors. For another game, create an alliterative story with the entire class using at least the same number of sentences as students; ask each student to read the story aloud and the student with the fewest errors wins.
Use an alliteration game to help students develop their memorization skills. As an entire class or in groups of at least ten students, ask one student to say where they are going on a trip and what they are taking, using only one alliteration, such as "I'm going to Toronto and I'm taking a tent." The next student adds to the list of objects using the same alliteration, such as "I'm going to Toronto and I'm taking a tent and a toothbrush." Students who forget one alliterative object are out of the game. For another game, have your sixth graders create alliterative mnemonic devices; each alliterative consonant in a sentence must relate to something that can be remembered. For example, to remember that ancient pyramids were built using scaled models, an alliterative mnemonic device might be "proportional pyramids were built with plans."