Who didn’t love Dr. Seuss as a kid?
His books contain casts of colorful characters and tongue twisting tales of fun and imagination. His silly antics have been bringing giggles to home for decades.
However, his books aren’t just fun to read. They are also extremely important as a beginning reading resource as they contain something incredibly helpful for young readers.
Tons of rhymes.
His books are in fact, partially the inspiration behind this next reading strategy that does not typically appear on classroom walls.
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Who is Rhyming Rabbit?
Rhyming Rabbit is a reading strategy that teaches young readers to think about words that end similar to another word and potential rhymes to help them decode the word.
This is another strategy I created for my students when I saw a need for it. I noticed students doing really well using beginning sounds as clues and even looking for chunks.
However, because Chunky Monkey lead them to look for word chunks throughout the words, they often ignored the simplest and most obvious possibility – making the connection with the end of the word and using a rhyme.
You can grab my Rhyming Rabbit poster here or by clicking on the image below.
Why is it important?
Did you know that the ability to rhyme can be an early predictor of whether or not a child can read? Whether or not they can rhyme.
In fact a study from the Center for Early Literacy Learning showed that there was a strong correlation particularly with nursery rhyme experience and stronger phonological skills early on.
This is because rhyming essentially teaches children how language works. Specifically, it introduces them to the rhythm of language and helps them to notice the patterns sounds make in words.
This makes this reading strategy, specifically directing a child to focus on finding rhymes, especially powerful. Using this strategy can help them make connections between other word patterns and ultimately make them much more fluent readers.
How to introduce it
To introduce this strategy, I begin with the book, The Rhyming Rabbit. This is a story about a lonely rabbit with an affinity for creating poems. None of the other animals in the forest appreciate his rhymes, until one night he meets a friendly sheep who loves to rhyme too.
It’s a cute little story with tons of rhymes. I actually read it twice. The first time I read through it without stopping and the second, I ask the children to raise their hand every time they hear a rhyme. We then quickly discuss the rhyming words and see if we can think of any others.
I then introduce them to our strategy, Rhyming Rabbit and discuss how he can be useful when reading. We look at several short sentences and identify words for which we know rhymes. For example: The ball rolled to a stop. We look at the word stop and discuss words we know that rhyme with stop and how they could help us decode the word stop if we didn’t already know it. We practice this with several other sentences.
While this strategy is similar to Chunky Monkey, the important part is that it forces children to focus on the word endings instead of scanning the word looking for chunks that may occur earlier on and not be as useful in decoding the word.
How to practice it
There are a ton of activities for practicing rhymes on Pinterest. However, I have a few I created that I have found to be really fun and keep beginning readers engaged.
- Rhyme Battles For this you’ll need to set a timer for say, 15 seconds. Give your child a word and have them tell you as many words as they can think of that rhyme with that word. You will record them on a whiteboard. Then you will trade of and you will choose a diferent word and do the same. The winner is the person who thought up the most rhymes.
You will need to being with smaller increments of time, but as your child gains more confidence you can increase the timer. Also, as your child gains familiarity with language patterns, let them attempt to write the words themselves without a timer. It’s important to remove the timer at this point because their processing speed won’t match their ability to write the words quickly and could quickly become frustrating.
- Match it – rhymes This is a simple and fun way to practice rhymes. On index cards, write a series of rhyming words. Do not repeat endings so as to make sure there aren’t multiple options for matches. For example, only include one set of rhymes that ends in at – like that and sat.
For the purposes of this game I create about 10 pairs. The objective of the game is to find the corresponding matches and correctly read them.
- Rhyming Books Dr. Seuss books are the perfect resource for this strategy. There are a plethora of other rhyming books as well, but none that have been quite as successful as resonating through the ages.
His books can also instill confidence in young readers as many of them heavily rely on short rhyming words and can easily be decoded once a child has a solid understanding of the concept of rhyme.
As you read these books with your child (or have them read them to you), be sure to take note of and discuss the rhyming words in the book and how they are useful in decoding unknown words.
- Rhyming Go Fish This is another easy to create game. On a set of index cards, create a deck of at least 24 cards containing 3 sets of rhyming words. For example, one set of rhymes might say ball, tall and call.
To play you will need to shuffle the deck and deal each player 4 cards, leaving the remaining in a draw pile. The objective is to find 3 pairs of words that rhyme. When it is your turn, you may ask the other player, “Do you have a card that rhymes with ____?” If they do not, they should direct you to “Go Fish” and draw a card from the draw pile.
The winner is the person with the most matches when either player runs out of cards.
- Odd Word Out
For this game you’ll need to create a set of index cards with pairs of rhymes written on them. For every pair of rhymes you write, also write a card that doesn’t rhyme. You then give your child a set of 3 cards, two of which rhyme. Your child will need to read the words and determine which two words rhyme and set the other one aside.
I typically do this in game manner and create a simple t-chart to keep track of points. For each set my child gets correct, they get a point. If they miss, I get a point. You can also add a timed component once they appear confident with the game.
Recommended Books
Below are some of my favorite books to use while teaching this strategy. Don’t forget to check out Amazon’s used books. You can sometimes score some awesome deals that way.
If you’ve missed any of the previous strategies, you can find them here. Be sure to stay tuned tomorrow for the next strategy. And don’t forget, through June 14th, we have an amazing giveaway going on. You could win an Amazon gift card for $150! Be sure to check out the details here.
And don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest, where I’m pinning all kinds of great ideas for instruction!
