Onset-Rime Practice Through Brain Breaks
In the summer of 2020, I began working with a pre-k student on his early literacy foundational skills. Before we advanced to learning letter names and sounds, we spent a lot of time working on reading/discussing the parts of picture books (title, author, cover, back cover, illustrations, etc.). In addition, we played a lot of games and did activities to build phonological awareness (word awareness, nursery rhymes, clapping syllables, and blending onset-rime). After a few sessions, I began to incorporate movement into our lessons and saw increased engagement. For example, a favorite game to play was blending onset-rime combined with acting out actions, emotions, and activities.
Teacher segments onset-rime and says: /j/ /og/
Student blends onset-rime and performs the action: jog
Teacher segments onset-rime and says: /h/ /appy/
Student blends onset-rime and acts out the emotion: happy
I have found this activity to be a great way to work on phonological skills with little ones but also fun for bigger kids who appreciate the chance to take a movement break.
I created these 40 colorful onset-rime brain break cards with the purpose of having a variety of actions that I can pull out at various times throughout the day in class or a small group or individual session.
Click on the above link or the image below to check them out:
These cards can be used in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes:
Activity suggestions:
Use cards as a transition/ short fill-in activity
Brain breaks throughout the day
Use for short physical/exercise breaks (indoors/outdoors)
Cover the onset-rime and show the picture and let students say the 1) onset-rime 2) blend 3) do the action
Use the emotion cards to talk about and act out
Use for ESL
What other ways can you use these activities?
Be creative and have fun!
Click to learn more about phonological awareness
Click to learn more about onset-rime
Click to learn more about the benefits of brain breaks
@bytheletterliteracy_readinglab
Important terms:
Brain Break- Small mental breaks that are designed to relieve working memory and re-focus attention.
Working memory- Short term ability to hold on to information while the mind is busy with another task.
Onset- Onset is the initial phonological unit of any word (consonant sound or consonant cluster).
Rime- Rime is the string of letters that follow the onset (vowel and consonant sound that comes after the onset). ex. in the word dog, the consonant sound /d/ is the onset and /og/ is the rime - blending onset and rime you get dog. Onset-rime practice builds awareness of word parts.
Onset-rime practice builds word awareness and falls under the umbrella of phonological awareness an early literacy skill that is critical to hearing word parts.
