success in rhyming finally

Hello Barbara,

Congratulations! I didn’t see your original post about your difficulty, but it sounds as if you’ve come up with a terrific method for making the concept concrete for your students. I’ll have to remember that. When I’ve presented phonemic workshops to teachers, they’ve often asked what to do when they can’t get the rhyming concept across. From what I understand from your post, you taught the onset and rime of the word, e.g., t—ack—before going into rhyme and then used the cube to help them understand when lack was correct but lake wasn’t. Is that right? Good job!

Thanks, Andrea.

I had difficulty in teaching rhyming because the kids probably didn’t have an idea yet about beginning sounds and ENDING sounds (someone said this from this board). So, I taught onset and rime first using Rocky the Robot from Torgesen’s program. “Guess what word Rocky the robot wants t…ake”.

Then I went into “what’s the first sound in TAKE” then instruction on the last sound “what’s the last sound in TAKE?”. I used the Unifix cubes to make the sounds concrete. (I used 2 cubes only because I used onset and rime and because they’re younger. Later on when I go to segmenting I would use more cubes with the Elkonin boxes.) Afterwards, I went into rhyming.

I was surprised that my 5-6 year olds had a difficult time with rhyming and yet the programs that we use suggest rhyming as the FIRST lesson. My 7 and 8 y/o didn’t have any problem with this at all. As I’ve always said before, this board is very helpful : )

Hello Barbara,

Rhyming is generally considered one of the easiest phonological awareness skills, but isolating the initial consonant seems to be even easier, as you discovered. I just think it’s great that you’re focusing on this in such a systematic way with these young children.

I don’t work with primary grade at-risk or sped students, but my colleagues would probably like to know more about Torgesen’s program. Do you like it? Favorite features? Worth the price? Why’s & why nots appreciated.

Our school has his kit called, Phonological Awareness Training for Teachers. I like it, but it’s not comprehensive, so I use it together with The Phonological Awareness kit by Robertson. I ordered Marilyn Adam’s book using my own money (like you) because someone suggested it here. I don’t have the book yet.

Torgesen’s program:
rhyming
onset and rime (kids like Rocky the robot)
sound blending
sound segmenting
segmenting and blending using letters

Robertson’s kit has substitution, deletion aside from those mentioned above. It also goes from word level to syllable level, phoneme level and finally grapheme level. Torgesen’s only has phoneme and grapheme level.

I don’t know the price, sorry.

Hello,

The Adams et al. book has some nice activities for young children. Have you seen the Daisy Quest and Daisy’s Castle software designed by Joe Torgesen? It’s unfortunately only available for MACs, but it’s a nice addition for young children through second grade. Great graphics and auditory feedback. It covers rhyming; beginning, middle, and ending sounds; blending; and counting sounds—not asking for the child to articulate each phoneme because there’s no interaction on the software, but counting is a good phonemic awareness task. The software isn’t a total program but can be a good supplement. It’s available through McGraw Hill at www.mhteachers.com/ There seems to be some kind of test on the CD as well. I don’t know what that is. I have earlier versions that didn’t include that. Another program that does get into more advanced skills is the Phonological Awareness Skills Program (PASP) by Jerome Rosner, one of the pioneers of phonemic awareness research in the 1970s. It’s sold by Pro-Ed. I haven’t used either of these, but I’ve looked at them pretty carefully. I don’t know that I’d want to follow through the PASP program to the end, which gets very complex, but it looked comprehensive and may be helpful. Both the software and the PASP program are reasonably priced.

I’m a long way out of that loop since I teach secondary grades. I have a book (loaned out the a K-teacher friend) by Benita Blachman (excellent researcher out of Syracuse on Phonemic Awareness). The title is “Road to the Code. It isn’t complete, either. Has lots of nice resources on Elkonian boxes, though. Suggests a scope/sequence and lesson plans.

I get lots of books through the World Cat database of my public library for review before spending my money. Just so many books.

Thanks for the Torgesen info.

Have seen this software advertised, but never reviewed it thoroughly. Our district uses a lot of McGraw Hill. Wonder if I might need a demo disk…

It is so nice having you on this board. Thanks for giving of your time to provide more resource ideas!