TEACHING RHYME AWARENESS
name the card out loud. This decreases the difficulty and effectiveness of the task, as the goal is for the learner to say the words, then decide if they rhyme. A variation of this game is for each student to listen for a specific pat- tern such as ‘it’ and use a voice output communication aid to indicate ‘that’s it’ when they hear words with the target pattern (e.g., sit, fit, knit, hit). • Listen for Rhymes in Poems or Books. Miss K’s class loves the funny poems at the website https://www.poetry4kids. com. She plays Mix-Up-the-Lines. Students have to de- cide if the lines rhyme or if they are different. For example: Zoom Gloom: ‘Distance learning, what a bore. Our school’s been closed a month or more. More / bore, do they rhyme?’ or ‘Distance learning, what a bore. Our school’s been closed a month or two. More / two, do they rhyme?’ Man- uel and his aide use partner assisted scanning to help him figure out which words rhyme. He is not asked to look at the words. Rhyme Awareness: Odd One Out Odd One Out means that when presented with several words, the learner decides which one does not rhyme (“Which does not rhyme: it/ sit / run”). Again, this should be an interactive instruc- tional task, not a test. Like with Judging Rhymes, adults should provide a variety of activities and stimuli. Samples are provided below: Slap It. Mr. Jeff read about games where a monster munches the odd one out. However, he works with older students and wanted something more age-respectful. He introduced a ver- sion of ‘Slap’ in which picture cards are shown representing one rhyming pattern each time (ex: -at on Tuesday, -in on Thursday, -ay on Friday). Most of the cards in the pack have today’s tar- get rhyming pattern (ex: -ing), but a few cards have different rhyming patterns (ex: -am, -ip, -ay). Mr. Jeff reminds learners that they are listening for words that do not end with the pattern (i.e., -ing). Every time they see a card with a rhyming pattern that is different, they slap it (or use a device to say SLAP). Ahn has Phase II CVI and can’t discriminate pictures quickly. Her partner whispers the words represented by the picture cards and Ahn decides if it is the correct pattern or a different pattern, and uses her device to say SLAP if it is different. Rhyme Awareness: Find the Match Find the Match simply means a learner is presented with a word, and must find the matching word. Typically, young chil- dren show this during shared reading of books (such as Dr. Seuss books) that have many rhyming opportunities. We read a line, and the learner uses the rhyming pattern to fill in the word. For learners who are nonspeaking, we may need to offer a choice of words to pick from. This may take various forms for students with CVI, as described below: Rhymes for a Student Names. Play a sound substitution
Rhyme Awareness Overview Rhyming tasks are an important component of the ‘shallow’ phonological awareness skills, and can be both engaging and successful for students with CVI. Sequence of Rhyming Tasks With regard to the order of rhyming tasks, Schuele & Bou- dreau (2008) suggest: judge rhymes (‘can / fan’ – do they rhyme?), choose one of three words that does not rhyme (‘can / man / dog’ – which one does not rhyme?’), match rhymes (‘The car is red, the car is dead’), or generate rhymes (’everyone think of a word that rhymes with ‘fun’). While the four rhyming tasks are in increasing order of difficulty, learners do NOT need to master the first task before moving on (Erickson & Koppenhaver, 2020, p. 43). Sequence of Stimuli The difficulty of the stimuli (the words used for rhyming tasks) is also an important factor, with suggestions given by Scheule & Boudreau (2008) and Erickson & Koppenhaver (2020): • Visibility of the Final Rhyming Sound: The rhyme pattern ‘Sam’ and ‘Pam’ will be easier to recognize (you can see the location of the sound) than ‘stick’ and ‘pick’ (where the sound is made at the back of the mouth). Later, work to- wards consonants that are less visible. • Words That End with a Consonant Rather Than A Vowel. Early rhyme activities will be easier with rhymes made with ‘at’ or ‘ip’ than ‘ay’ or ‘oy’. The consonants at the end have clear placement cues (for /t/ the tongue is just behind the lips, while /p/ is made with the lips), but vowels don’t have such a clear point of articulation. Note that for many learners with CVI, these ‘rules’ for choos- ing words for rhyming tasks may be less important, as they may be unable to see the articulation patterns (i.e., the mouth loca- tions where sounds are formed). Rhyme Awareness: Judging Rhymes Judging rhymes simply means that when presented with two words, the learner decides if they rhyme (‘car / far – do they rhyme?’) However, that is merely a test, and we want to pro- vide instructional tasks that are engaging and allow us to give informative feedback to help learners figure out the rhyming patterns, not just be told if they are right or wrong. Sample strat- egies to support student with CVI are described below: • Listen for Rhyming Patterns in Games: This task often in- cludes picture cards, with students matching cards (e.g., cat / hat; sun / run) that have similar rhyming patterns (Er- ickson & Koppenhaver, 2020; Gillon, 2018; Yopp & Yopp, 2000). Many students with CVI will not be able to look at pictures and name the card, so a partner might need to
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