Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum

Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum

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Teaching Reading K-2 Workshop.

Word Study and Fluency: Put It Into Practice

Put It Into Practice

Match Rimes With Books

In this activity, you will practice reviewing children's books to identify common rimes (spelling patterns) for developing word study lessons.

The purpose of phonics instruction is to help students read words encountered in texts. While teachers at a given grade level have a basic idea of the scope and sequence of skills to teach, some texts lend themselves to specific word study skills. Teachers must decide which phonic elements will enable students to read texts more efficiently. Identifying common rimes is critical to learning how to read and write new words.

The interactive activity below: Match Rimes with Books provides practice in reviewing texts and identifying one or more common rimes that are found in multiple words in the text and can be practiced by students during reading.

  • How would you introduce the rime to your students?
  • How would you challenge your more capable readers in word study?

Tip: Notice that there are two sounds for the -ow rime (e.g. slow and town). To challenge your more capable readers you might contrast the two sounds of -ow or review the two spellings of -ow -- ow and ou.

This activity is also available as a PDF document.

Now gather several books you use with your students.


Try this activity with other teachers at a faculty meeting or Literacy Team meeting. Share your ideas and make a list of rimes to use with specific books.

  1. Print the list of the 37 Most Common Rimes (PDF), as identified by Wylie and Durrell.
  2. Analyze a book you use with your students for multiple occurrences of any of the common rimes.
  3. Identify the rime that appears most frequently. Generate a list of the words that include the rime to introduce to your students.
  4. Now develop a phonics lesson plan to introduce and practice rimes. Make sure to include the components of explicit instruction as outlined in the Develop a Lesson Plan activity that follows.

Copy a sample page from your book. Highlight the common rime and generate a word list to submit.


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