Rhyming and reading
Perhaps less obvious, however, are the dramatic benefits to literacy that are gained through exposure to rhymes. Research i has provided a wealth of knowledge on how sensitivity to rhyme helps children progress with reading.Researchers found that a familiarity with rhymes helps children to detect the phonetic constituents of words. Children at a very young age can recognise that cat rhymes with mat. In making this connection, they detect the word segment ‘at’.
As we know rhyming words (words that have sounds in common) often share spelling sequences in their written form, children sensitive to rhymes get prepared to develop future reading. By making children aware that words share segments of sounds (e.g. the -ight segment shared by light, fight, and might) rhymes help prepare them to learn that such words often have spelling sequences in common too.
A child that has learnt this characteristic of rhyme is therefore likely to be well equipped to learn how certain spellings produce similar-sounding words once they start school. Experience suggests that when they begin to learn reading, children that are sensitive to rhyme are better able to make the inference, that cat and rat are likely to be spelt the same way as the word mat. In this way, learning to read one new word is readily extended to learning several more. Singing rhymes at the toddler stage therefore provides a strong foundation for learning to read slightly later on: put simply, good rhymers make good readers.



