Blending onset and rime can be hard for kindergarten children who don’t yet know how to read. It’s also a common difficulty for children who struggle with learning to read.
There are several ways to help children learn to blend onset and rime, and you may have to try more than one way before finding the one that works with your students.
Before you attempt to teach onset-rime blending , make sure that they can identify the first sound in spoken words and can easily blend and segment
Watch a kindergartner named Autumn below. I had the chance to work with her at Windy HIll Elementary in Calvert County, Maryland. You’ll see several different techniques that I tried to help her catch on.
Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
Here are two of the approaches I took with Autumn:
Here’s another activity that I didn’t have the chance to try with Autumn:
(Linda Farrell, 2023)
Use this free set of printable picture cards for phonological awareness instruction.