Articles on: Literacy

I have a student who still struggles with onset and rime. How can I help?

While other students also would have initially experienced the same difficulty, due to your teaching the skill has developed. Now you are left with just one student. This can happen in every class, that a very complicated profile can appear.

I suggest the following:

Make sure that the Term 2 skill (the isolation and verbalisation of initial sounds) is solid. If this skill is 'wobbly' and difficult, even though the student may have scored 60/80 or 100% then here is the issue. I always look for any sign of 'negative observations'. Negative observation suggest that even if the student attained a reasonable score, the negative observations suggest that further work is still required.


If the student is already seeing a speech pathologist, speak or email them, as phonemic awareness can also be treated by the speech pathologist (SP) and in fact the SP may have insights into why the student is having difficulty.


Skill repetition but also the cards in the Preparing for Reading program are ideal. There are CVC pictures which are divided into the onset and rime and then into 3 phonemes. The task is very visual and concrete. You also while engaging in auditory bombardment reveal half of the picture. Commit to auditory bombardment over the short-term when developing this skill.

Updated on: 25/11/2019

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