Owen and I had a tiny bit of quiet time together yesterday while Cora was napping and Maddy had lunch at preschool, so he and I read, played cars, and did a few Rhyme Sorts together. Today, Owen took over and taught Maddy what he and I did yesterday. It was pretty awesome.
fyi: Rhyme Sorts are simply pictures of rhyming words on cards that students sort into rhyme families. I have three groups of Rhyme Sorts that I used today and yesterday–one sort has 2 different rhyme sounds, another has 3, and the last has 5 rhymes. All of the materials are from Bear’s Words Their Way. . . (2004) but can be made very easily by using clip art, cut-outs from magazines, etc.
- Rhyme Sort: We’ve done several Beginning Sound Sorts since our first one,
but Owen hadn’t rocked those like he did this Rhyme one. He grabbed the sort with 3 rhyme sounds first, so we went with that one. Here’s what we did–
First we laid out all the cards and figured out what the pictures were. He immediately grabbed two cards–key and tree–and put them together. Key and tree rhyme. They go together, he said. I really let him move through the cards on his own, and when he found two other pictures, cry and fry, he put them together as well. When he came across bee, he looked confused.
I then moved the rhyme groups into columns: It looks like we have more than two words that rhyme. Let’s put them in a column together so that we can see all the pictures that have rhyming sounds. We moved through the other pictures, and when we came across the third rhyme sound, bell, we made a third column. Eventually we had three groups: bell, yell, smell, shell, well; cry, pie, tie, fry, fly; tree, bee, key, three.
We repeated the rhymes out loud several times together, pointing to each picture as we went, then Owen did it himself. Then he totally mixed up all three columns and said he wanted to do it again. (That was great–not what I planned, but it just meant more practice for him!)
After some help getting through the 3-rhyme sort for the second time, Owen picked up the 5-rhyme sort. He had the hang of it by now, so with some guidance by me, he worked it out. The last one was easy–just a 2-rhyme sort. He insisted on doing this one, too.
So today, when I suggested we try the Rhyme Sorts again, Owen jumped up, grabbed the bag, and could barely contain his excitement as he explained to Maddy how to do a Rhyme Sort. He loved being the teacher, and so began their learning for today. . .
