ABSTRACT
Many parents and practitioners are very aware that using poems and rhymes is an excellent way to help children understand letter sounds. However, it must be stressed that if children have already been used to hearing poems and rhymes on a regular basis from birth onwards, this process will seem very much more relevant and enjoyable. Poetry should be enjoyed for its own sake initially and then it may be useful in helping children with early reading. This chapter gives some suggestions and examples of ways to help children with letters and sounds. The Bookstart website states very clearly that dramatic benefits to literacy are to be gained from exposure to rhymes. The website listed at the end of this chapter states that:
Evidence suggests 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’. Because rhyming words – words that have sounds in common – often share spelling sequences in their written form, children sensitive to rhymes are well equipped to develop their 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.
(Goswami 1986, 1988)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, for example, that fight and might are likely to be spelt the same way as the word light. 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 later on. Put simply, good rhymers make good readers!
(www.bookstart.org.uk/professionals/about-bookstart-and-the-packs/research/reviews-and-resources/the-benefit-of-rhymes/)