Onset/Rime 

Word Families

The Phonological Awareness Assessment of Identifying Onset and Rime is an excellent tool for educators.  The primary use of this assessment is for grades PRE-K – 1st Grade, but can be used for later grades if teachers see a need to identify potential areas of reading weakness.  The assessment is designed to take approximately 5 minutes and is given on an individual basis.  The assessment measures the student's ability to identify rime by offering two words and having the student say the rime that is the same.  An example is cat, hat; the students should identify the rime of at. The student is given a similar assessment with three words and is told to identify the two words that have the same rime sound. I really like the blending portion of this assessment.  This assessment provides words that have different rimes and prompts the student to add different onsets to make new words. An example is, run – change the onset to “s” the new word is sun.  This assessment is a formal assessment that makes a great formative or summative assessment.

 

 

•    The assessments are found on the Reading A – Z website

•    This can be used as a formal, formative or summative assessment

•    The targeted age is Kindergarten through 1st Grade

•    The assessment measures the student's ability to recognize onset and rime.

•    This assessment is conducted individually and takes approximately five minutes to conduct.

      The MLPP  Phonemic Awareness Assessment is adapted from B Taylor; P. Dewitz and Pearson’s The CIERA early assessment battery for studying schools that beat the odds. Taylor, B.; Dewitz, P.; & Pearson, P.D.  Conducting this assessment individually is the preferred setting, however, small group settings work as well.  Since the assessment is audible, the quietest environment that is possible is preferred.  There is a total of three Phonemic Awareness Assessment in this document.  The first one measures Rhyme Assessment and Rhyme Choice.  The teacher describes what a rhyme is to a student then offers examples of what words rhyme and don’t. I.E., Dark, Park rhyme – Dark, Dog, do not rhyme.  The assessment helps the teacher understand what they children know specifically about rhyme.

       The second assessment is phonemic blending.  The phonemic blending offers an assessment of onset and rime.  The assessment is a crucial and belongs with a phonemic awareness assessment.  The assessment offers a great opportunity for the teacher to sound out letters and have the student describe what word the letters make.  I.E., /D/ “pause” /O/ “pause” /G/ “pause”, correct response is DOG.

       The last assessment is phoneme segmentation.  Children generally recognize and connect letters with the initial consonant sound and slowly become aware of the ending consonant.  The most difficult sound placement for children to identify is the medial letter position in a word.  The purpose of this assessment is to ensure that students hear all three parts of the word.  The beginning (onset), middle, and the end.  

 

•    Found at Michigan Literacy Progress Profile

•    Informal and Formal Assessment

•    Students in K-1st grades and those that are below grade level in 2nd and 3rd

•    Measures the students phonemic awareness in, Rhyme, Phonemic Blending (Onset and Rime),

      and Phoneme Segmentation

•    The Assessment is approximately 15 minutes

•    This assessment is used in a small group or individual setting.