“Riming” Race

“Riming” Race
Objective:
Students will orally create words with specific ending rimes.
Materials:
•  One dry-erase board or piece of paper for keeping score
•  A marker or pen
Lesson:
Review/explain that many words have two parts: an onset and a rime. The onset consists of the
initial consonant, digraph or blend of the word. The rime includes the vowel and all the letters
that follow. A new word can be formed by changing the onset. Give the students an example.
Then, conduct the following activity:
1.  Divide the group into two teams.
2.  Tell the students they will create words by adding beginning sounds to a rime (e.g.,
bug is formed by adding the sound /b/ to /ug/). Decide if both nonsense words
and real words will be accepted.
3.  Select one student from each team.
4.  Call out a rime (e.g., /āk/).
5.  The first student to call out a word with that ending rime (e.g., bake) wins his or
her team a point. After saying the entire word, the student must also identify the
beginning sound, isolated from the rime (“The first [initial] sound was /b/”). If the
student answers correctly, another point is won.
6.  Continue the game using the same or different rimes.
Adaptations:
If this activity seems too hard for the students, provide the onset and have them blend the
onset-rime to create a real word.
To make the game more challenging, ask students to spell the called word, and give a point
to the team only if the word is spelled correctly. This activity should then be used during the
Word Analysis/Spelling portion of the lesson.
For English language learners, the teacher may choose to allow the students to create nonsense
words as well as real words. However, in doing so, it is important to discuss the meaning of the
given word, as well as whether it is real or nonsense. (For example, if the student says, bake, the
teacher may respond, “That’s a real word! It is a word we use to describe a kind of cooking.”
If the student creates a nonsense word, for example, dake, the teacher may respond, “What a
great nonsense word!”)