Children are, by nature, curious which makes it easier to teach them. But what adults often forget is that kids need to be taught in a way that attracts their attention, and engages them with the learning process. That is why traditional ways are less effective when teaching them. If you are teaching younger learners vocabulary, make sure to include fun interactive activities, such as vocabulary rhymes.
Parents read rhymes to their children from a very early age. Researchers have mentioned many benefits of this practice in their development. Do you know that they can be useful in language learning too?
In this article, we will discuss vocabulary rhymes and how they help in building a strong foundation of vocabulary for beginner-level students.
Let’s get started!
How Do Rhymes Help With Language Learning?
Rhymes are fun, no doubt. You surely loved them when you were a kid. But how do they help us? All of us were taught rhymes in kindergarten. Did you ever wonder why they were used in class?
Rhymes are often used to develop the pre-literacy skills of children. They make the learning process fun, but that is not the only advantage of them. Rhymes are taught to children for their many benefits as listed below:
Listening Skill Development
The biggest contribution of rhymes in children’s learning is developing listening skills. When you are reading your kids a rhyme or a story, children try to figure out what you are saying. They try to understand and visualize the story. They learn new words and concepts.
The practice of reading to children doesn’t only develop their listening skill but their speaking skill also. They try to mimic your speaking style and pronunciation.
It is often prescribed to ESL students to listen to audio clips and mimic them. This way, they can understand a word by listening and learning to use them in their speech. But for younger students, especially kindergarteners, the process might be complicated. For non-native young learners, you can use English vocabulary rhymes to teach them new words. These fun rhymes will have their attention and they will not be bored while learning.
Learn Pronunciation
What is the most interesting part of rhymes in your opinion? Obviously, the rhyming words! And how do rhyming words help? They help us understand the pronunciation of a word.
Have you ever explained to someone how a certain part of a word sounds like another part so that they can pronounce it correctly? Imagine someone cannot understand the pronunciation of ‘thorough’. You can say that it sounds like ‘borrow’. If they have trouble pronouncing the ‘tho-’ part, tell them it sounds like ‘Thanks’. People who have unique names often use this technique to teach others pronunciation. It is also a useful technique if you are explaining the pronunciation of a word from a foreign language.
Vocabulary rhymes are a great way to teach children about pronunciation. With rhymes, you are not actively pointing out the similarity in pronunciation of two words, but students will understand anyway. Using vocab rhymes, you can teach pronunciation of a lot of words without much effort.
Understanding Sound Patterns
Children who struggle to understand pronunciation from spelling can take the help of rhymes. We already know that not all similar-sounding words are not similarly spelt. Likewise, not all words with similar spelling sound the same. So, along with spelling, use rhymes to train your kids to categorize words depending on their sound patterns.
Rhymes teach children to recognize sound patterns. This is an important lesson that later helps a lot when students learn to write words after listening. Using vocabulary rhymes, you can teach your child how to differentiate between syllables and categorize them.
Curious about how many grammar rules in English? *Hint: the previous sentence had some grammatical errors!
Improving Creativity
Rhymes are not just similar-sounding words gathered. They have concepts. Each rhyme describes a scene or event, or similar things associated with their daily life. Through rhymes, children learn to imagine and visualize concepts. They develop their skill in language comprehension. This improves their creativity.
Some rhymes do include words that have no official meaning, for example, ‘Humpty-Dumpty’. But they are necessary to improve your kid’s imagination.
Implementing Vocabulary Rhymes In Lessons
Teach Rhyming Words
When you are teaching your students about syllables, start teaching them about rhyming words too. The words that have the same syllables and similar sounds will be easier for the students to remember. For example: ‘Gain, main, pain, rain’, ‘All, ball, call, mall’, or ‘Moon, soon, spoon’.
Vocabulary rhymes are a great way to teach homonyms and homophones, especially words with different spellings. Teach your students to categorize the words depending on their sound patterns.
Check the list of rhyming words below:
- Air, layer, pair, stair
- And, band, expand, grand, land
- Any, many, penny
- Ark, bark, clerk, mark, park
- Ash, bash, cash, dash, mash, smash, splash
- At, bat, cat, fat, mat
- Bake, cake, make, stake, steak, wake
- Bare, care, dare, hare, mare, mere
- Bay, day, lay, ray, stay
- Beat, greet, meat, meet, split
- Been, green, seen, tin, pin
- Bill, chill, kill, mill, till, will
- Blue, clue, Flu, glue
- Boat, coat, goat, moat
- Book, cook, hook, look, took
- Boot, brute, shoot
- Bride, guide, hide, tide
- Bump, lump, trump
- Change, range, strange
- Clip, dip, hip, lip, sip, tip
- Drove, stove, grove
- Face, grace, place, race
- Gap, map, slap, tap, zap
- Got, hot, not, pot
- And many more…
Make Your Own Vocabulary Rhymes
After you taught your students about rhyming words, ask them to make short poems with them.
Let’s make a short rhyme about vocabulary. Can you think about a word that rhymes with vocab? Here are some useful ones:
|
Cab |
Grab |
King crab |
Lab |
|
Slab |
Stab |
Fab |
Jab |
We don’t need to use all of them obviously. A sample rhyme is given below:
To make myself good in vocab
I attend a class near the science lab
I go there every day using a cab
There’s a shop near the class that sells king crab.
Can you make such vocabulary rhymes on your own like this?
This practice helps them remember the meaning of those words also. After all, the rhyme needs to be meaningful. So, they also learn about the appropriate use of those words in a sentence.
Do Vocabulary Rhymes Help Older Or Adult Students?
Of course, everyone can be benefitted from vocabulary rhymes if used correctly. Search for rhyming words, learn their meaning, parts of speech, context etc. Then try to use them properly in a rhyme. It’s not mandatory for the rhyming words to come at the ending of a sentence. Try to play with the rhythm when you are making rhymes.
You can play games with your friends using vocabulary rhymes. The rule is to not only find rhyming words but also make a sentence with them. See how far you can go.
But before you start improving your skill, you must understand your current level. SpellQuiz Vocabulary Test can help you evaluate your skill and get a proper idea about where to start. Just listen to the audio clip at every stage and type the sentence with accurate spelling to pass the stage. Don’t worry about accents. The clips are recorded with professional artists.
Also, you can play the clip as many times as you like. The audio clip will be played at two different paces- normal and slowed so that you don’t have any problem understanding the words. It will take around 10 minutes for the test to determine your vocabulary range and assign you a grade or level. After getting the result, you can start improving your skill from that point.
Also, you should look for learning tips appropriate for that level. If you are looking for grade-appropriate words, don’t look further! SpellQuiz Printable Word Lists offer a wide collection of words divided into grades. There are multiple word lists for each level. Word lists are available for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and adults also. Moreover, you can find special word lists for spelling bee competitions. Print them out, and hang them on your wall for a quick glance when necessary.
Final Words
Never underestimate regular evaluation. We have already discussed SpellQuiz Vocabulary Test. Will that be efficient for constant evaluation? You can, of course, use that. But SpellQuiz offers several other features that will make your learning process easier and more enjoyable. Consider SpellQuiz Spelling Test. This test is the best for daily or weekly assessment. The test is divided into grades as well so that you can find a test suitable for you. Take the test for your grade. When you start to excel, take the test from higher grades. Or you can take the vocabulary test to see if you are ready to advance to the next level.
Competition does inspire people to give their best to achieve something. Traditional learning environment utilizes this a lot. However, it is hard to find competition when you are learning on your own. But, not with SpellQuiz. SpellQuiz Spelling Bee Online is an online spelling bee competition where students from anywhere in the world can participate. There are scoreboards for daily, weekly, monthly, and all-time top spellers. It is a great platform to show off your skill and grow your confidence.
If you are worried about joining a competition right away, you can warm yourself up using SpellQuiz Practice Test. Practice as much as you want before joining the actual competition. It also lets you adjust to the online environment.
Happy learning!