Onset & Rime
The next step in building beginning readers phonological awareness is to play with a concept referred to as “onset & rime.”
The simplest way to introduce onset & rime for the purpose of this post is to take a look at a list like this:
fat
cat
sat
hat
rat
flat
It doesn’t take long to realize that the relationship between these words is that the ending portion of the word (/at/) remains the same. The beginning sound – or onset – is what’s changing. Together, the list of words forms what we might call the “-at” word family. Word families are based on a literacy concept referred to as Onset & Rime. The paragraphs below offer further explanation.
Onset refers to the consonant sound(s) that come before the vowel and remaining sounds in a single-syllable word or a syllable. For example, the /h/ sound is the onset in the word hat. And the /st/ sound is the onset in the word stack.
Rime refers to the portion of a word that follows the initial consonant(s) sound. For example, /at/ is the rime in the word hat. And /ack/ is the rime in the word stack.
Playing with onset & rime helps children develop fluency with the sounds at the beginning of words and begin to think of words in terms of syllables or chunks. This is important because the English language is built of predictable sounding word chunks — phonograms — that can be used as a tool for decoding what might otherwise be unfamiliar words.
In the realm of literacy education, rimes are also known as ending phonograms, or perhaps more usefully, word families. While vowel sounds can vary depending on their placement in a word, ending phonograms offer sound stability for beginning readers (Wylie & Durrell, 1970). For example, the a is stable in the ending phonogram -ack (sack, track, black), but makes many sounds when applied to an initial phonogram sound like ca- (cat, car, came, call). The instability of vowel sounds can be a point of confusion for beginning readers, but the stability of ending phonograms helps lessen the burden.
There are 37 “dependable” phonograms that comprise nearly 500 primary grade words (Wylie & Durrell, 1970). When we help children understand the 37 rimes (phonograms) we provide them with access to nearly 500 words. Even better, the resultant knowledge can be applied as a decoding strategy – “look for chunks I know” – within other, more complex, words. In this sense, playing with onset & rime is an incredibly valuable activity for beginning readers to engage in.
Playing with Onset & Rime — How do we do it?
Once again, it is important to remember to introduce this concept via spoken word (not printed language). A great piece of children’s literature to lean on is a book titled The Hungry Thing by Jan Slepian and Ann Seidler. In the story, a Hungry Thing comes to town with a sign that reads “Feed me” hung around his neck. When townspeople ask him what he would like to eat, the Hungry Thing consistently mispronounces the food item he is longing for. As example,
“What would you like to eat?” asked the townspeople. “Schmancakes,” answered the hungry thing. “Shmancakes!” cried the townspeople. “How do you eat them? What can they be?”…
“…Shmancakes…sound like Fancakes…sound like…”
“Pancakes to me!”
This silly story challenges children to use the language they hear (and its humorously incorrect onset sounds) to produce the proper onset & rime for each food item the Hungry Thing is longing for. From this experience, you can begin to play with onset & rime in other ways (see list of activities below).
Children’s Books that Foster Onset & Rime Awareness:
A video recording of The Hungry Thing can be found here.
Activities to Promote Development of Onset & Rime Awareness:
What’s for Lunch? — Building off of The Hungry Thing story, print the task card below. Provide your child with paper and markers. Invite him/her to draw a food item to place in a lunch bag. Then, have him/her tell you what’s for lunch “the Hungry Thing way”. For example, “The Hungry Thing wants a wapple for lunch.” Then, you guess what the child drew and placed in the lunch bag (apple). For a kinesthetic twist, have your child use play-doh to create a sculpture of the food item instead.
I Say, You Say — This spoken word game simply involves playing with language that has similar ending chunks (phonograms). “I say ball…you say..” (tall). “I say will…you say…” (spill). For a document with the 37 dependable phonograms, click here.
Word Family Flip Books — This flip book set serves as a nice transition from onset & rime that is based on spoken language to onset & rime in printed form. The images alongside each word offer a beginning reader support as s/he works to produce the word using a beginning sound plus an ending phonogram.
Word Family Posters — When children have demonstrated some degree of mastery producing onset & rime sounds orally, you can begin to transition to textual representation through the use of Word Family Posters. Word Family Posters are typically constructed once or twice a week (depending on student interest/ability). For a document with the 37 dependable phonograms in flashcard form (which could be affixed to word wall posters), click here.
Making Words — Making Words is an activity developed by Patricia Cunningham. It involves prompting children to create words using letter tiles. A sample instruction set can be found here. Letter tiles from Scrabble or Bananagrams work just fine. Alternatively, plastic letter tiles can be purchased here or created from fun-foam. In the classroom, I prefer foam tiles because they are quieter and less distracting for students to work with. In addition, creating foam tiles enables me to make a single, wider tile for each phonogram which helps children think of the chunks as “glued sounds”.
Word Family Practice Cards — This set of write on/wipe-off word family practice cards allows a learner to practice generating words that have a similar ending phonogram (rime).
Wooden Word Puzzles — These wooden puzzles challenge students to pay attention to the beginning consonant sound (phoneme) as it changes.
Closing
Building on an understanding of rhyme and alliteration, Onset & Rime challenges children to play with the sounds at the beginning and end of words, developing linguistic dexterity through the production of similar sounding words. As children develop fluency with onset & rime, they begin to develop phonemic awareness, the ability to recognize and manipulate individual speech sounds in spoken words. While there are 26 letters in the alphabet, there are 44 phonemes in the english language. More about that in the next post.
Next Up: Phonemic Awareness: What is it and why is it important?
Citations:
Slepian, J. & Seidler, A. (1967). The Hungry Thing. NY: Scholastic.
Wylie, R., & Durrell, D. (1970). Teaching Vowels Through Phonograms. Elementary English, 47(6), 787-791. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41387692