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Spoonerisms

Transposition of the initial sounds of two words, giving a new phrase. Named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844-130), well known for his tips of the slung.

Examples:

She got soaked in the roaring pain. I hanged my bed. Never stroke a darling snog. You've tasted two worms.

Writing activity: Inventing spoonerisms

This activity could be done with the whole class initially, after which the children can work individually, in pairs or in small groups.

Devise a way of choosing consonants at random. You could lucky dip from small squares of card, each marked with a letter. These will be the initial letters of words, so definitely leave out 'x', and maybe one or two others. Treat 'qu' as one letter.

Two letters are chosen at random. The first is for making a list of adjectives, the second for a list of nouns.

So, if the letters 'w' and 'p' are pulled out, the children might come up with: wet, wiggly, wonderful, weird, wobbly, wonky; panda, pushchair, pig, poodle, policeman, peg. These could be matched up in order, i.e. 'wet panda', 'wiggly pushchair', 'wondeful pig' etc. Or the lists could be numbered separately, and children could give random numbers to each other, so you might match up 'wobbly' with 'poodle'. Devise a way that works for you and your class.

There's a lot of mileage in this idea before you even get to spoonerisms. I can't wait to write a poem about a wobbly poodle... but a pobbly woodle, or a piggly wushchair (whooshchair?) transports me to a new dimension!

You can use this idea for verbs and adverbs too: wiggled, wobbled, wished; prettily, patiently, ponderously. Who knows what inspiration might get thrown up for a child to run with? 'The pobbly woodle priggled wittily, but no-one seemed to care.'

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