How To: Rime Drills

• Lesson Objective: Recognize and use common rimes to build fluency and accuracy through orthographic mapping.

• Grouping:  Small-group

• Methodology: Students use an onset bank to build words by connecting graphemes to familiar rimes.

• Duration: 10-15 minutes

  
  

It’s About Rime We Talked About This

Working with rimes—rather than individual graphemes—has many benefits. It's important that we include both in our practice. Rimes reinforce pattern recognition.  They support orthographic mapping. By anchoring common rimes in memory, students more easily store and retrieve whole words. Rimes reduce cognitive load. Once a rime is familiar, students only need to decode the onset (the initial sound), making unfamiliar words more accessible and speeds up decoding.  When students realize they can read and spell dozens of words by swapping out the onset (e.g., cat, hat, sat, flat), they gain a sense of mastery which improves confidence.

🖍 How the Routine Works

During small group work, each student receives a Rime Drill handout. I often begin with a quick vowel pattern review as a warm-up, sneaking in some extra reinforcement before diving into the activity.

After the review, students use an onset bank to build words by connecting graphemes to familiar rimes. They work independently to generate as many words as possible within the allotted time.

It’s essential to check in with each student at least once during the activity. I always ask them to whisper-read a few of their words aloud. Without this step, some students focus only on assembling words, rather than actually decoding them. A quick check-in ensures they’re applying the alphabetic principle—not just playing with letters.

Sample vowel pattern review before engaging in rime drills.

Sample rime drill.

Check out the Interactive Unit Guides to see how this lesson fits within each unit. There, you’ll find links to the unit-specific Rime Drills. I build these for each unit to both review and target our current phonological patterns.