Tongue Twisters are a great way to get children ‘playing’ with language. Traditionally, Tongue Twisters have been used as a technique to develop oral language, particularly in terms of pronunciation, enunciation and as part of vocal warm ups.
Don’t forget that making the text of the Tongue Twister visible is extremely useful and important. Tongue Twisters make for excellent reading fluency exercises, and create wonderful and playful opportunities to explore concepts and skills such as phonemic awareness, alliteration, rhythm, syllables, word awareness, vocabulary development, and memory work.
There are many ways in which we can extend the learning associated with Tongue Twisters. Why not:
Invite the children to compose their own tongue twisters and provide an opportunity for them to share them with their peers and families
Explore some tongue twisters in different languages (Find some examples in my resource pack!)
Illustration station - invite the children to choose tongue twisters and create corresponding illustrations!
Stopwatch - in groups or pairs, challenge the children to repeat their tongue twister correctly as many times as possible using a timer. Incorporate mathematical knowledge and create tallies and graphs of times, successes, challenges, patterns etc.
Phonological Awareness:
Word awareness - clap, stamp, walk, jump or hop for every word in the tongue twister
Syllable Awareness - clap, stamp, walk, jump or hop for every syllable in the tongue twister
Sing it - can you sing the tongue twister? Choose a memorable air or nursery rhyme refrain that works with the rhythm of the tongue twister!
Opportunities galore!
Download my free Tongue Twister Resource Pack with over 80 Tongue Twisters to try!