How to Teach Onomatopoeia to Any Student

There are plenty of ways to teach the concept of onomatopoeia but I have found this way to be very efficient and fun. For those of you who do not know, onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it describes. A few examples of onomatopoeia would be bam, bang, and buzz. In Tennessee this is a standard that we must teach to our middle school students.

A few weeks ago I was trying to come up with something creative that could help my students learn the concept of onomatopoeia. What I came up with is not off the wall creative but it is at least a little more than simply talking about the concept or just reading the textbook.

My students love to draw. I try to incorporate drawing into as many of my lessons as I can. With onomatopoeia I decided that drawing could play a major role in helping bring this concept to life. Using this website(www.examples-of-onomatopoeia.com/index.html), I presented each of my classes with examples of onomatopoeia and then I had them draw me a picture that illustrated the usage of that word. For example, if the example of onomatopoeia was "buzz," then the student might draw me a picture of a bumble bee.

In case my last example does not make very much sense let me break down each step of the lesson here.

1. Give each student a large sheet of paper. (Note: You can probably use copy or printer paper if that is the only paper available.) I go down to the teacher workroom and we have extra large sheets of paper that can be cut to whatever size I need. I normally make it about 2 to 3 times of the size of regular printer paper. I want to make sure that my students have plenty of room to draw.

2. Pass out and crayons and markers to your students so they can illustrate their drawings.

3. Depending on how many onomatopoeia words you want to do have your students do, separate their paper into 2 or 4 squares. I normally have them do this by simply drawing lines on their paper so that they have 4 equal squares or sections. Some of my students like to fold their paper to give them their four sections.

4. Explain the instructions to your students. Obviously, this activity will occur after you have taught onomatopoeia using a textbook or PowerPoint. Students should already have at least a slight knowledge of what onomatopoeia is before starting this activity. Tell students that you are going to be presenting examples of onomatopoeia and that it is going to be their job to illustrate the word by drawing a picture that shows the word. Explain to them that each section on the paper will have one picture in it. If they divided their paper into four sections, they should have four pictures. Tell them that when you give them the onomatopoeia word that they should put it at the top of one of the four sections. Tell them to draw it fairly big and underline it. Then explain to them that they will be drawing the picture for that word underneath the word within the confines of that section.

5. You may need to give them plenty of examples before starting depending on age and cognitive level. I gave simple examples such as drawing a bee for the word "buzz" or cars crashing for the word "bam."

6. After this you simply present your class with a word that is an example of onomatopoeia. This website probably has the best list of onomatopoeia words that I found (www.examples-of-onomatopoeia.com/index.html). I normally gave them about 5 minutes per square and then we discussed their drawings for 2-3 minutes.

As I have already stated, my students absolutely loved doing this. After everybody was done drawing a picture for a certain word we would go around the classroom and allow each student to show the picture they had drawn. My students loved seeing what their classmates came up with and I think it really helped each student learn the concept of onomatopoeia. I had some really good drawings. For the word "click," I had one student draw a picture of an "Easy Button" being pushed. For the same word, another student drew a picture of somebody putting their seat belt on. For the onomatopoeia word "whack," I had a student draw a baseball bat hitting a ball. I had so many creative drawings at the end of the day and I hate that I can only recall a fraction of them as I sit here writing this. I think your students will enjoy each aspect of this activity and they will love seeing what their peers came up with.