Rhyme Time

Currently I am in my methods class, which is the course that you take right before you start student teaching. Right now we are in the classroom Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00AM-2:00PM learning how to teach ELA and Math to grades 1-6. Recently, we received our placements that are in two elementary schools in the Albany City School District. This week each dyad was assigned an ELA topic in which you had to come up with ways to teach your current placement. My wonderful partner and I came up with many different ideas on how to teach POETRY (our topic) to students in a self-contained classroom. Of course Pinterest has many awesome ideas when it comes to teaching, but teaching poetry is apparently a sore subject ;). I came across an idea that I had to modify a bit to fit our students but thought it turned out pretty good, so, I thought I'd share.

First, this activity is to teach the concept of rhyme to the students. Obviously you would start off with your own introduction along with the definition of rhyme which is, words that follow a repeated pattern. You should also make it clear to your students that words can rhyme even if they are spelled differently.

What you need for this activity:
A rhyming poem
Cookie Sheet
Magnets

To begin, you would choose a poem that has good rhyme within it to revolve your activity around. I chose the poem, "Bear in There" by Shel Silverstein. Here is the poem:

Bear In there

By Shel Silverstein

There's a polar bear
In our Frigidaire—

He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.


With his seat in the meat


And his face in the fish


And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,


He's nibbling the noodles,


He's munching the rice,


He's slurping the soda,


He's licking the ice.


And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.


And it gives me a scare


To know he's in there—


That polary bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

I then took 10 words that were within the poem and created a "Rhyme Time" chart. I would introduce this activity and chart as "The Cookie Sheet Challenge". The reason I would do that is because after this activity, as well as other ones within this unit, each student would receive a paper cookie to put in their very own cookie jar if they completed the activity and did a nice job with following directions (similar to a token economy system). Eventually, once students fill their cookie jar they receive a prize for good behavior. The rules regarding this system would have already been addressed before this activity.

Once I created the chart with the words from the poem I also put pictures along with the words. Many of our special needs kids are visual so this is key! I then found words that rhymed with the words that were in the poem and on the chart. For the rhyming words, instead of writing the word and putting a picture with it I just put a picture of the word that rhymes. For example, if the word that was in the poem was bear, I would have the word bear with a picture of a bear on the chart and then the rhyming word that the student has to match with it is JUST a picture of hair. As the students do this activity they will constantly be saying the words out loud to try and find the rhyming picture. Depending on the student, they may have a one-on-one aide who will help them in going through the words, identifying them, and finding the rhymes. Once they match the picture with the correct word that is on the chart the student will then have to write the word of the picture underneath with an expo marker (it erases off because these are laminated). For example, for the picture of hair the will have to write the word hair underneath the picture to the best of their ability.

Here are some pictures of the activity:

Each picture has a magnet underneath it so that they stick to the cookie sheet.