Literacy teachers like to say that using onsets and rimes teaches children through analogy. I like to think that the process enables children to take ownership of their reading and writing. "I can write at, so I can write cat and lots of other words." It makes believers out of young children who previously said, "I can’t!" when asked to read or write such words. I started teaching in 1967 (the dark ages) and we used what we called word families. Now we call them rimes and linguists prefer to say phonograms, but to the classroom teacher they are a tool to move their children into literacy. In 1970, Wylie and Durrell outlined 37 commonly used patterns in their book, Teaching Vowels Through Phonograms. Those words will be in a red font in the list below. Many authors have published lists for facilitating the use of rimes in their phonics, phonemic awareness and spelling programs. Fountas and Pinnell have made things easy for us. They have a complete list in Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom (Heinemann). Their list contains single syllable words that would be appropriate for young learners. For multisyllabic words, older readers and writers may spell one syllable at a time.

If you’re interested in using Mother Goose and rimes as part of your first grade spelling, see my list on the Mother Goose part of this web site).

The list that I have here is in alphabetical order from left to right. If some word families appear twice, it’s because they should be (i.e. -ome as in home and in some). Unfortunately, some of these rimes do have lengthy word lists. I am only developing activities for the most common rimes and for those that are frequently requested by teachers and  parents to support spelling and decoding programs.