Rhyme and Reason: developing children's understanding of rhyme

In this study, an extensive episode of teachers working with the intention of developing children's understanding of rhyme is analysed. The data for the analysis consist of a video-recording of two teachers and seven children (aged 3-5 years) working with a type of rhyme-card and trying to construct a poem. The analytical interest lies in the opportunities that the teachers provide children to develop a notion of rhyme. The result shows that what a rhyme is to large extent remains implicit in the talk. The critical distinction between a relation between words based on sound (i.e. a rhyme) and a relation between words based on sense also remains unverbalized. This means that while some children may discover this distinction themselves through participating in this activity and encountering a variety of examples, a child who has not understood this difference is not actually helped to do so. Relevance and implications of this study to the practice of preschool are briefly discussed.