Onomatopoeia is a word that makes a sound in text.  Think of the Song, “Old McDonald Had a Farm”.  All of the words that are animal sounds are examples of Onomatopoeia.

TASK 1: Listen to Dennis Lee’s poem, “Lizzy’s Lion” at: https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poet/dennis-lee/

Dennis Lee

Task 2: Listen to Mme Yio read, “The Branch” by Mireille Messier.  This book is read by permission by Kids Can Press.  Click on the book cover to access it.

 

Task 3: Think of examples of ONOMATOPOEIA in songs, books and poems.   This can be in a book you are reading now. Search for examples and record them in your Poetic Devices Chart.  Then, try to create you own.  Have fun with it and even use fun fonts like the examples above.

HINT:

Think in terms of Categories.  For example:

  • Machine noises—honk, beep, vroom, clang, zap, boing.
  • Animal names—cuckoo, whip-poor-will, whooping crane, chickadee.
  • Impact sounds—boom, crash, whack, thump, bang.
  • Sounds of the voice—shush, giggle, growl, whine, murmur, blurt, whisper, hiss

POETIC DEVICES CHART:

Image credit: Scholastic.  Used with permission for educational purposes.