Home Library What's New

After Spectronics’ recent series of workshops in New Zealand, many participants enthusiastically requested more information about onset rime activities and their importance in literacy development. So we thought it would also be good to share them with you here.

Onset rime has been shown to be one of the most effective ways of improving phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is an important skill – it is what we use to hear sounds, syllables and words in speech.  Without phonological awareness we cannot break words down and decode them to read unfamiliar words.  We also find it extremely hard to recode words to spell them.  Therefore, phonological awareness is a very important skill in learning to read and write – and onset rime is a fabulous way to improve this skill for early readers and writers.

For more information about onset rime, download the information sheet developed by Jane Farrall, Spectronics’ Senior Speech Pathologist.

The following onset rime activities, developed by Spectronics’ Speech Pathology team, are available for free download from the Spectronics Activity Exchange:

• Boardmaker activity to print for word family “at”
• Clicker 5 gridset for word family “at”
• Clicker 5 gridset for word family “eat”
• Boardmaker Plus activities for word family “eat”
• Boardmaker Studio activity for Word Families –it, -ay, -in, -ap, -ill, -an, -ack, -ip, -ing, -at, -ore, -ug, -ell
• Boardmaker Studio activity for Word Families -aw, -ide, -ake, -ock, -unk, -ick, -oke, -ank, -ice, -ash, -ump, -ink
• Boardmaker Studio activity for Word Families -ine, -ain, -ate, -ail, -est, -ale, -ight, -ot, -uck, -eat, -ap, -ame

And finally, click here to download a helpful instruction sheet for making your own onset rime activities in Boardmaker Plus!