Onsets and Rimes
Before children begin to read, they have many years of listening to the sounds of language and experimenting with those sounds as they learn to speak. Eventually children begin to become aware of specific parts of our language as they generate rhymes and generate words that begin and end with a certain letter or sound.
In fact, most children become aware of these specific parts of words–onsets (all letters before the first vowel) and rimes (the vowel and what follows) before they begin school and certainly before they learn to read. Current research suggests that students find it easier to divide words into these onsets and rimes than into any other units (stop=st—op). This is clear by the interest they show in nursery rhymes and in their ability to create their own verses/chants using rhyme and alliteration.
Once children have a fairly good understanding of the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make (sound symbol relationship/alphabetic principle), it is good practice for them to physically manipulate the onsets and rimes as they look for patterns in words and discover relationships among words.
One area of research that supports the learning of these patterns of words indicates that once children have some words they can read and spell, they will use these known words to figure out unknown words. This is key in learning to read. Current theory also suggests that the brain is a pattern detector and that decoding a word occurs when the brain recognizes a known spelling pattern. If it finds no familiar pattern, it searches through its memory bank of words with similar patterns to find a close match. (Making More Words, Cunningham)
This word study work teaches children about the internal structure of words. Word reading becomes more efficient when students process the beginning letter(s) and then chunk the rest of the word instead of processing each letter separately. This is particularly important not only as children learn to read, but also as they progress and attempt to decode multisyllabic words. They look for known patterns in these longer words, as well.
Practicing onsets and rimes can be done in a variety of ways. There are games that can be purchased–“Chunks” by Didax and “Spellominoes” by Trent. There are excellent, free Web sites—see the links below. Children can also practice by manipulating onsets and rimes that have been written on index cards. Here is an example of how to use those cards with younger students:
Say a short word (“big”), sound it out with your child into onset and rime (b/ig), and ask your child to put down the corresponding cards. After that task is complete, leave the “ig” card, and replace the “b” with a “w.” Help your child read the new word. Then replace the “w” with an “f.” Your child will quickly catch on and will soon be reading this family of words. For a list of common onsets and rimes see the link provided below.
For parents
List of onsets and rimes for making games on index cards.
http://www.fishermarriott.com/Extra%20Files/onrisent.html
For children
The word is stated and children must find the rime. Excellent for younger children.
http://www.professorgarfield.org/Phonemics/pumpkin_patch/pumpkin_patch.html
Children click on the object that matches the new word. Excellent for younger children.
http://www.professorgarfield.org/Phonemics/greenhouse/greenhouse.html
Although this is not specifically working with onsets and rimes (although it can be), it does give excellent practice in making small words from big words.
http://www.inklesstales.com/games/makeaword/index.shtml
Children make words by combining onsets and rimes. It is like using a magnetic board.
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Games/mag/spelling.html
Children listen to word and select missing onset. Great for younger children.
http://pbskids.org/lions/games/ears.html
Students unscramble letters to make real word. Challenging yet good for older students. Caution: Some words are simple, and others are randomly hard. There is a time limit for each set of words.
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/braingames/scramble/scramble.htm
Children choose a rime then choose an onset to make a real word. Word is added to word bank. Rime is left on screen so new onsets can be added. This is great for spelling and word family work for all ages. However, children will need help figuring out which words are actual words.
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/construct/index.html
