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Tom's Tempting
Tongue Twister
Truly Tangled
My Tongue

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Subjects

  • Arts & Humanities
    --Language Arts

Grade

  • 3-5
  • 6-8
  • 9-12

Brief Description

Create challenging tongue twisters that truly tangle the tongue; learn about parts of speech.

Brief Description

Students

  • explore what makes a good tongue twister.
  • identify parts of speech in different tongue twisters.
  • create a tongue twister that truly tangles the tongue.

Keywords

tongue twister, noun, adjective, verb, adverb, speech

Materials Needed

Students

  • paper and pencil
  • dictionary and/or thesaurus (optional)

Lesson Plan

In this activity, students will write their own tongue twisters using a variety of parts of speech.

Write some of the tongue twisters below on a sheet of chart paper. (Some of these have been adapted from the 1st International Collection of Tongue Twisters.) Invite students to give some of the tongue twisters a try.

  • Tom's tempting tongue twisters truly tangled my tongue.
  • Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
  • Susie was sitting in a shoeshine shop where she sits shining shoes.
  • Sam of Seattle sells thick socks.
  • Roberta ran round and round the Roman ruins.
  • Santa's short suit shrunk.
  • Wayne went to Wales to watch wild walruses.
  • Phillip's four furious friends fought for the phone.
  • Chester chewed a chunk of cheep cheddar cheese.
  • Craig Quinn took a quick trip to Crabtree Creek.
  • Sally Sanders saw seven seaplanes sailing swiftly southward.
  • Blake's black bike's back brake broke.
  • Don Dodd's dad's dog's dead.

Talk with students about what makes a good tongue twister. They might suggest that most (but not always all) of the words in a tongue twister begin with the same letter. Or, as is the case with "Craig Quinn took a Quick Trip to Crabtree Creek," many of the words begin with the same "kuh" sound.

Talk about the parts of speech that are used in tongue twisters. Most have nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Many include adverbs. Mark up a couple of the tongue twisters as examples:

Santa's (noun) short (adjective) suit (noun) shrunk (verb).

Wayne (noun) went (verb) to (preposition) Wales (noun) to (preposition) watch (verb) wild (adjective) walruses (noun).

Blake's (noun) black (adjective) bike's (possessive noun) back (adjective) brake (noun) broke (verb).

After talking about what makes a good tongue twister, challenge students to

  • use their own names as the starting point for a tongue twister.
  • use at least two nouns, one verb, and one adjective or adverb in their tongue twister.
  • test out your tongue twister to make sure it twists the tongue.

Set aside time for students to share the tongue twisters they create.

As a follow-up activity you might print out a sheet with some of the students' tongue twisters on it. Leave space between each tongue twister so students can write above each word the part of speech that word represents.

Assessment

Have peers assess if each student...
  • used his/her own name as the starting point for the tongue twister.
  • used at least two nouns, one verb, and one adjective or adverb in his/her tongue twister.
  • created a tongue twister that truly twisted the tongue.

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.5 Communication Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills

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Originally published 01/26/2006
Last updated 02/16/2009