📘 Star and are share the last bit

What you’ll learn

1. Rhyme lives at the endHear that a rhyme is a shared ending sound, and tell it apart from a shared first sound.Star/are and cat/hat match at the end. Cat/cup only match at the start. That start-match is a different game.
2. Families that share a tailBuild a spoken word family by keeping the rime and changing the onset, and notice that some rhymes do not look alike.Magnet letters make -at, -og, -an. The rime is the tail that stays. Blue and shoe rhyme in the air, not on the page.
3. Songs that hold a rhymeUse a known nursery rhyme to predict the matching word, and change one word so the song still rhymes.Dock/clock, wool/full, and Twinkle twinkle yellow car. A pause before the last word is how produce begins.
4. The one that does not belongPick the odd word out of a trio, and keep pairs that rhyme even when the letters disagree.Cat, hat, cup. Can does not rhyme with hat. Bear and chair still match. Two sorts: ending-match and start-match.
5. Make one yourselfProduce a rhyming word by finishing a known chant and by choosing what is allowed into a rhyming soup.Gingerbread man fills the hole after can. Silly soup only takes matching tails. Tonight, catch two words that match.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Department for Education, Development Matters (revised September 2023) — 3 and 4-year-olds, Literacy: develop their phonological awareness, so that they can spot and suggest rhymes; count or clap syllables in a word; recognise words with the same initial sound, such as money and mother. Support examples: change a word so there is still a rhyme, for example “Twinkle, twinkle yellow car”; make rhymes personal; deliberately miss out a word in a rhyme (ginger-bread —); use magnet letters to spell a word ending like ‘at’ and put other letters in front. Reception: listen carefully to rhymes and songs, paying attention to how they sound; learn rhymes, poems and songs; pause before the rhyming word; have fun with rhyme even if suggestions do not make complete sense. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/development-matters--2/development-matters
• Common Core State Standards Initiative, English Language Arts Standards, Reading: Foundational Skills — Kindergarten. RF.K.2 Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes). RF.K.2.a Recognize and produce rhyming words. RF.K.2.c Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words. https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/K/
• Department for Education and Skills, Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics (2007) — Phase One, Aspect 4: Rhythm and rhyme. Children need to build a stock of rhymes through hearing them repeated. Activities include rhyming books, learning songs and rhymes, rhyming soup, rhyming bingo, finish the rhyme, odd one out (three objects or pictures, two that rhyme and one that does not), I know a word. Children entering Phase Two: some will recognise spoken words that rhyme and provide a rhyming string, but inability to do this does not prevent moving on to Phase Two as the speaking and listening activities continue. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7aa7b6e5274a34770e630c/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf
• Department for Education, The reading framework (updated 2023) — Poetry and rhymes in Reception and year 1. Through enjoying rhymes, poems and songs, and reciting them together, teachers build children’s emotional connection to language. The predictability of rhymes helps children memorise and re-use words. Call and response allows children to join in gradually. Learning traditional nursery rhymes such as Hickory Dickory Dock, Little Jack Horner and Baa Baa Black Sheep can heighten awareness of individual sounds through alliteration, assonance and rhyme. Because rhymes share the same end sound, they alert children to the contrast of the phonemes at the start of each word as well as the repeated phonemes at the end, as in dock/clock, Horner/corner and Incy/Wincy. Daily poetry, rhyme and singing is a priority. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-reading-framework
• Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (NCEE 2016-4008, July 2016) — Recommendation 2 (strong evidence): develop awareness of the segments of sound in speech and how they link to letters. Teach larger segments first, then onsets and rimes. An onset is the initial consonant, blend or digraph; the rime is the vowel and the remaining phonemes (e.g. /c/ and /ool/ in cool). Example 2.2 Day Two, Rhyming: can / man / tan; can does not rhyme with hat; ban, fan and plan also rhyme with can. Isolating sounds and linking them to letters will help students read about 70 percent of regular monosyllabic words. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/wwc_foundationalreading_070516.pdf
• Department for Education, Help for early years providers: Exploring words (updated 22 June 2026) — Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and distinguish sounds. Provide experiences of rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration (words that repeat the same sound). Hearing and playing with sounds in spoken language comes before formal phonics in Reception. Change words in a familiar song and see if children notice whether they still rhyme. Statutory EYFS: reading consists of language comprehension and word reading. https://help-for-early-years-providers.education.gov.uk/areas-of-learning/literacy/exploring-words

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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