Joe decides to shift gears.
Joe: Rhyming is hard. It might be easier if we look at what the words look like. I'm going to write a few words. (Joe writes and says aloud): sad, bad, mad. What's the same about these words?
Ruben (Points to the -ad in each word.)
Joe: Right. They all end in -ad and make the ad sound.
After looking at some other word families, Joe returns to reading the book aloud, pointing to the words that rhyme:
Joe: Some are thin. And some are fat. The fat one has a yellow hat. I sing high, and my Ying sings low, and we are not too bad, you know.
Ruben: That one matches. (Points to the page that Joe just finished reading.) Bad, it's the same as the word on the other page. (Turns back several pages to the rhymes with "sad," "glad," "bad," and "dad.")
Joe: That's right, we read "bad" on this other page. I think you're beginning to get the idea of rhyming. The word "bad" is in both these places. (Takes out a small stack of index cards.)
Joe: Let's try to say some other rhyming words. I'll be the student and you be the teacher. You start with a word and I'll try to make a rhyme for it.
Ruben: Dog.
Joe: Log, frog.
* * *
Joe: Let's take two rhyming words that we have talked about from the book and add them to our concentration game.
Ruben: I pick "sad" and "dad." (Draws a picture of a man for "dad" and then writes a "D" on the matching card. Makes a sad face for "sad" and writes an "S" on the matching card.)
Ruben and Joe play a quick game of concentration focusing on matching initial consonant sounds. They use the two new word cards, and word cards from a previous session. When they finish this activity they agree to take turns next time being the teacher as Ruben seemed to enjoy this.
Rhyming … What just happened?
Joe's first activity, re-reading a familiar book, helped to reinforce Ruben's new and developing skills as an emergent reader. This allowed Ruben to
- Focus more on the meaning of the story and less on how to read each word
- Practice fluency with familiar text
- Build confidence and experience success
Joe also introduced the concept of rhyming words and discovered that this may be an area that is difficult for Ruben. This activity allowed Joe to:
- Introduce rhyming as a concept
- Discover Ruben's difficulty in hearing differences in pronunciation of words well enough to detect rhymes
- Introduce new vocabulary
- Take a chance and try a new activity when the one he had planned wasn't working
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Date of Last Updated: 7/14/2004
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