How to teach onsets and rimes {rhyming books list}

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Learning about and isolating onsets from rimes is a key part of developing one’s phonemic awareness, which is the ability to recognize sounds within a word.

When looking at a single syllable word, the onset is the beginning sound before the vowel. The words “onset” and rime” are fancy ways of looking at a CVC (consonant – vowel – consonant) word and further developing phonemic awareness.

For example, for the word, “bat”:

The onset is the beginning phoneme (single sound) in the word.

The rime is the part of the word with the vowel and letter or letters that follow.

the /b/ is the onset

/at/ is the rime

/b/ in “bat”, the onset, is the first phonemic sound in the word, /a/ and /t/ are the next two phonemic sounds. But we put the /a/ and /t/ together to make the rime /at/.

Why do we teach about onsets and rimes?

Of course, we don’t say the words “onset” or “rime” to children, but cultivating the vital skills onsets and rimes teach will help the child learn about word families and will help your child develop vital speaking and reading skills for the future! This will lay a solid foundation for spelling and literacy skills for the future. An understanding of these phonetic skills is vital for their future success.

How to teach onsets and rimes?

To begin with, phonemic awareness is built through oral and ear word play. This can be reading nursery rhymes. This can be asking for a word that rhymes with “pig” or “mug”. You can show pictures to a child, ask what it is , then show them another picture that rhymes with that picture (“cat” and “mat” or “cut” and “mutt”).

Here are some examples for how to phrase this simple word talk time:

Teacher:

If you put these sounds together, what word would it make?

/r/ + /ed/

/z/ + /ap/

/l/ + /uck/

/h/ + /op/

/b/ + /oy/