Grade 2 · Lesson 26 — Words that end the same

What this lesson is

Lesson 1 of 6 on rhyme. The single idea is: Two words rhyme when they end in the same sound. The tool the children are handed is the question “Do the sounds match, and where?” — by the end of the topic that question, not the teacher, settles every case. Held constant today: By ear only. Nothing written, so spelling cannot mislead. The worked example is built on The foaming river plunges down, a roar of bubble-sound., ringing foaming river plunges.

Recall — sixty seconds, before anything new

Retrieve: Two-level analysis in context · Re-teach Level One + Re-teach Level Two. Ask for it before you introduce anything, take the answers from boards rather than from hands so you see all thirty, and do not re-teach — note who has lost it and carry on. This is the middle of the launch: context, then this, then why it matters. Only what today leans on — a minute spent retrieving something unrelated costs the same and buys nothing, and the child who cannot recall the prerequisite is the one you will lose in the I-do.

How it goes

1. Sixty seconds of retrieval opens it: “Yesterday: two-level analysis in context. Quick — one together.” Same language as when it was taught, a new example. If the class cannot do this, that is today's real work — stop and reteach.
2. Ten seconds on why it matters — “Careful words make careful thinking.” Your words, not those; it is a different reason every lesson so what lands is the idea rather than a sentence they can recite.
3. You name the one idea: Two words rhyme when they end in the same sound. Then the plan — what it is, the question we ask, and that we will find them together.
4. Then you do one yourself, on screen, one click per move: The foaming river plunges down, a roar of bubble-sound. · the question · ring foaming river plunges · name it rhyme. Do it exactly the way you want it done — this is the task they are about to do on their boards, not an easier one.
5. You build the same thing on the board and leave it up for rhyme. The four steps are identical in every lesson of this unit — sentence, question, test, answer — so the children read the method rather than the layout, and today's board shows The foaming river plunges down, a roar of bubble-sound. still marked when they start work.
6. The We-do runs 4 items on whiteboards — Each set of four lines is a ballad stanza? (p.31), All right, the author thought, and Poodle heard him. (p.36), blue / true, sing / ring. You are scanning for who applies the question and who is guessing from meaning; those look identical on a right answer and completely different on a wrong one.
7. Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves — Sheet and pencil · Ask the question on every item · Find the rhyme in each one. Then they work alone, with the same worked example printed at the head of their sheet.
8. Close on You had to know which one it was. — an item they have not met, so it measures rather than reminds — then the line they leave with: “Rhyme is about sound.”
9. Watch for: Judges by spelling instead of sound — Spelling is visible; sound has to be produced. If you see it: “Say them both out loud. Do they END the same?” (Remedial sheet 24.)