5 Effective ways rhyming books help to improve reading skills

The only way to improve reading skills in children and adults is to practise reading regularly. Struggling readers however face challenges that can make the reading experience tedious and difficult.

They must first overcome several hurdles that were not grasped properly when they started learning to read. These issues are distinguishing sounds from one another, identifying letters and their sounds, and understanding blends, silent letters, syllables and vowel teams.

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Furthermore, they have to apply spelling rules to words while making sense of all the mechanics involved. The activity seems confusing and the struggling reader gets frustrated.

Rhyming books can help tutors to improve reading skills of their students successfully. Do a reading assessment to learn more about a learner’s reading level and then use rhyming books to improve reading skills. Here are 5 ways these books can help.

5 Ways rhyming books help improve reading skills

1. Content is engaging and enjoyable

Rhyming books make reading engaging and enjoyable. Nursery rhymes in Mother Goose, poems in The Red Ear Blows Its Nose and the stories with rimes in the series Improve Spelling and Reading Skills are fun to read.

Making the activity of reading inviting is the first step to fixing the problem. Rhyming books create a fun learning environment where students can read along to the clever rhyming schemes and laugh at the silly events in these stories.

Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose

by Scott Gustafson

From nonsense to lessons learned, these 45 rhymes include the very well known (Itsy Bitsy Spider) and the somewhat familiar (Hickety, Pickety, My Black Hen). The truly fantastic pictures speak more than a thousand words as artist Scott Gustafson riffs in paint on themes present and imagined in each verse.

Scott Gustafson’s unique style, influenced by legendary book illustrators Arthur Rackham and N. C. Wyeth, makes this a volume to be treasured by children and illustrated-book lovers of all ages.

US$11.99

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2. Phonological and phonemic awareness improves

Rhyming books improve phonological and phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness is the umbrella over the many sounds made in speech. These sounds are sentences that are segmented into words, syllables, onset-rime and phoneme.

Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness. It is being aware of each sound made in a single word. Rhyming books allow readers to gain knowledge of spelling words with digraphs, trigraphs and 4-letter graphemes. Books that explore rimes that may or may not rhyme improve awareness of sounds and the letters that represent them.

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Improve Spelling and Reading Skills (10 books)

by Joyanne James (Author)

These fun books of words with rimes that contain digraphs, trigraphs and 4-letter graphemes in many stories are useful for story time, spelling improvement classes, poetry sessions, improving phonological and phonemic awareness, and reading intervention programmes.
These spelling books come in both e-book and paperback formats for your pleasure. They make up a series of fun books that are having a spelling party on the inside.
The 2022 editions are AI Stories, EA Stories, EE Stories, EI Stories, EY Stories, IE Stories, OA Stories, OO Stories, OU Stories and OW Stories. They are all having their own fun with words.

US$29.90

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3. Decoding is practised

Decoding words quickly is the key to improving reading skills. Rhyming books allow readers to practise the 6 steps in decoding words while they are caught up in the rhythm of the stories. Also, when the last words in lines don’t sound the same, the reader will know something is wrong.

Readers practise to read from left to right and not play the guessing game like seeing ‘mug’ and blurting out ‘jug’. They learn to sound out the first letter or blend and practise telling the difference between ‘b’ and ‘d’ in ‘bad’ and ‘bid’.

They practise breaking words into syllables to maintain the rhythm of the lines in the poems. They look for familiar blends as in ‘ous’. They must sound out words in their minds. Then, ask themselves if the word makes sense before saying it out loud.

4. Repeated rimes are memorable

Rhyming books provide words with same rimes which may or may not rhyme which become memorable. Readers see the rime ‘ough’ several times in one story and hear the different sounds it makes in ‘though’, ‘through’, ‘tough’, ‘thought’, ‘cough’, ‘drought’ and ‘lough’. These words rhyme with ‘throw’, ‘true’, ‘stuff’, ‘court’, ‘off’, ‘doubt’ and ‘luck’.

Also, rhyming books offer a lot of sight words because although the words ‘red’, ‘head’ and ‘said’ rhyme with each other, we can only decode ‘red’ but not ‘head’ and ‘said’ which are sight words. Seeing and hearing words that rhyme repeatedly help a student to memorise words and improve reading skills fast.

5. Fluency is developed

The aim of reading intervention is to achieve fluency and smooth reading will be accomplished with rhyming books. Since consistency is key to drastic improvement, as these books are engaging and enjoyable, they are usually chosen to be read over and over again just for the fun of it.

Tutors can allow students to enjoy the stories in rhyming books as much as they like as this will definitely develop fluency fast. Once a reader has reached this level, then they can explore decodable books, sight words books and high frequency words books for even better results.

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Conclusion

These are the 5 ways rhyming books can help improve reading skills. Make sure to do a reading assessment before making your selection. You want to ensure that you offer your student the appropriate material to stir interest in reading and sharpen skills where necessary.