Before you teach — read this first
Grade 2 · Lesson 31 — Rhyme in MCT's poems
U1 · Poetics + grammar maintenance · Rhyme (6 of 6) · 10–15 minutes · 18 slides ·
Launch → I do → We do → You do → Closure
What this lesson is
Lesson 6 of 6 on rhyme. The single idea is: I can find the rhyme in a poem from our book. 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: Book text only. The securing lesson. The worked example is built on Each set of four lines is a ballad stanza?, ringing set of four.
Why it matters — say this in your own words, about ten seconds.
“Naming a thing is the first step to understanding it.”
A different reason every lesson, on purpose. It is not on a slide and it
is not a script — if you have a better reason today, use yours. What should land is the
idea, not a sentence they can recite.
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
- Sixty seconds of retrieval opens it: “Yesterday: rhyme patterns. 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.
- Ten seconds on why it matters — “Naming a thing is the first step to understanding it.” Your words, not those; it is a different reason every lesson so what lands is the idea rather than a sentence they can recite.
- You name the one idea: I can find the rhyme in a poem from our book. Then the plan — what it is, the question we ask, and that we will find them together.
- Then you do one yourself, on screen, one click per move: Each set of four lines is a ballad stanza? · the question · ring set of four · 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.
- 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 Each set of four lines is a ballad stanza? still marked when they start work.
- 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), sweet / street, chair / hair. 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.
- 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.
- Close on You write it in four-line sections. — an item they have not met, so it measures rather than reminds — then the line they leave with: “Rhyme is about sound.”
- 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.)