Glossary · Sounds and phonemic awareness
What is a rhyme?
Definition
Two words rhyme when they share the same rime: the vowel sound and every sound after it, as in cake and lake.
Rhyme is about sound, not spelling. Bear and chair rhyme though they look nothing alike, and cough and dough look alike but don't rhyme. That is why rhyme work is done orally.
Hearing rhyme is usually easier than producing it. A student can often tell you that hat and mat rhyme long before they can give you a rhyme for hat on their own. Both are worth practicing, but neither is a gate for phonics. Some students who struggle with rhyme do fine at blending and segmenting, and those are the skills tied to reading.
So don't hold a student back from letters because rhyme is shaky. Keep it in the warm-up and move on.
In a lesson
Say three words, “bell, shell, fan,” and ask which one doesn't rhyme. Then ask for a made-up rhyme for bell. “Zell” counts; the sound is what matters.
Examples
Each word with its spelling units, one per sound.
- cakec·a_e·k
- bakeb·a_e·k
- raker·a_e·k
- dragd·r·a·g
- flagf·l·a·g
Words come from our lexicon, checked against a pronouncing dictionary. Words a student sees in our assessments are left out.
Why does this matter for the record?
Record rhyme as a warm-up skill, not a prerequisite. A Needs support rating here alone is no reason to pause the phonics sequence.
Rate each skill as you teach it
Needs support, Developing, Secure. The rating schedules the review and builds the report.