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Rhyming is an indispensable literacy skill for primary grade students. In fact, it is part of phonological awareness, which is the understanding that our language is made up of sentences, words, syllables, and letters.
One way to help strengthen students' phonological awareness is by working with rhyming words.
When words have the same middle and ending sounds, we say they rhyme.
There are three general stages, or progressions of rhyming: rhyme introduction, rhyme recognition, and rhyme production.
Rhyme Introduction
Introduce the concept of rhyming to your children early on! Youngsters can begin distinguishing rhymes as early as pre-school. Reading nursery rhymes and singing songs with your youngster prepares him/her for hearing rhymes. As you read nursery rhymes and sing songs to and with your preschooler, be sure to point out the rhyming words in the songs or stories that you read. In this introductory phase students are making connections with the rhyming words they hear and the song or text being read.
Rhyme Recognition
During this stage, students begin to recognize whether or not words rhyme. As they listen to, or are presented with pairs of words, they can distinguish the words/word patterns that rhyme or do no rhyme with each other.
To practice rhyme recognition, we use the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness videos --which are amazing! During the rhyming recognition part of the lesson, the teacher says a word, then the students show me thumbs up or down to show whether or not they rhyme. When given three words to distinguish, they will name the two words that rhyme, or the one word that does not rhyme with the other two.
Rhyme Production
At this stage, learners can produce a rhyming word on their own! When presented with a word, they can hear the rime (ending sound), or word pattern. Then, to produce a rhyming word, they change the onset (beginning sound) to think of a word with the same rime. The ends of rhyming words do not have to be spelled the same, but they do have to sound the same.
In my class, I've played a little game where I mispronounce a word, and my students tell me the correct word by changing the beginning sound of the pattern or word family I say. For example, "She is wearing cute blues." After recognizing the silliness of my sentence, they realize that I should have said shoes instead of blues! It gets really fun as I try to think of more words to stump them with, while they get better at coming up with rhyming words!
Another idea for rhyme production is to ask your learners words that rhyme with a certain word. For a Valentine's Day theme, you could ask your kiddos come up words that rhyme with love or words that rhyme with heart. They will enjoy coming up with real or nonsense words!
The Stages of Learning About Rhyming Words
Free Valentine Printables
Here are some free printables to help your learners with rhyme recognition and production. The six black and white worksheets include picture and written answer choices. Answer key given.
In the ValenRhymes printables pack, students will practice rhyme recognition as they decide if two words rhyme, by checking the thumbs or or thumbs down boxes. Another rhyme recognition activity allows them to sort pictures (or words) into rhyming (or not rhyming) categories.
Click the image below to download the printables!
To help with rhyme production and spelling, students will cut and paste letters to spell pairs of rhyming words. Then they will think of words that rhyme with the target words.
MLD Subscriber Freebie!
Check out the free Lovely Rhymes Valentine printables made especially for My Lesson Designer subscribers! The zip file includes six black and white worksheets and a Google slides and PowerPoint version of one of the worksheets. Students will practice rhyme recognition and spelling rhyming words. Rhyme recognition includes checking under the valentine emoji that shows whether or not two words rhyme.
The digital version provides kiddos with immediate feedback (a Valentine emoji) as they work to reveal a Valentine picture by deciding whether or not two words rhyme!
Here is the Lovely Rhymes Digital Preview!
Click the image below to access the Lovely Rhymes Subscriber Freebie!
Looking for Valentine phonemic awareness fun?
This digital game, available in Google Slides and PowerPoint, is an excellent way for students to build their understanding of letter sounds and words. For each correct answer, the game piece advances around the game board. The number of spaces depends on the number of sounds in the word. There are a total of six games to choose from.
The six games are also available as printable books, in PDF version.
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