All about rhyme…

what is a rhyme?

Words that rhyme have the same sound

'Alice' and 'palace' both have the same sound.

You can write rhyming poems by using pairs or groups of words that sound the same.

what is a stanza?

In rhymes and poetry, a stanza is a block of text made up of lines that talk about the same thing.

It is like a paragraph in prose or a verse in a song. A stanza may be arranged with others and may have rhyming patterns and meters.

what is a Meter?

The meter in a rhyme is the number of beats of a line. This is also called ‘syllabic count’.

What is a verse?

Verse is a word that was originally used to describe a single line of poetry, however it’s now used more often to describe a section of poetry. This might be one line, a stanza, or the entire poem.

What is PROSE?

Prose is a free-flowing verse and can be any mix of words without a pattern or a rhyme.

Her feathers were neat and rounded,

down to her long, slender tail.

Whenever she saw Alice scooting,

she would swoop to grab her mail.

~Sofia Sparrowhawk

What is a SYLLABLE?

When we speak words out loud, we pronounce different parts separately. These parts are called syllables.

  • Palace has two beats, or two syllables: ‘Pal’-’ace’

  • Post has only one syllable: ‘Post’

what are Syllabic beats of a line?

Some syllables have long sounds and some have short sounds.

When we speak the word ‘palace’, the first part of the word sounds longer and the second part of the word sounds shorter (remember this is about how it sounds and not how long the syllable is).

The long and short sounding syllables add rhythm to rhyme, like the beats in music.

Olive Otter had many cubs,

who loved to swim and play all day.

Each morning they teased each other,

but they would never ever stray.

~Olive Otter

In Alice the Palace Postwoman books, each stanza has a set number of syllables in each line which gives it a pattern as you read the story.

CAN YOU THINK OF SOMETHING THAT RHYMES WITH…

LOG

…?

frog

hog

dog

fog

jog

CAN YOU THINK OF SOMETHING THAT RHYMES WITH…

TART

…?

start

dart

Cart

chart

heart

CAN YOU THINK OF SOMETHING THAT RHYMES WITH…

HARE

…?

CARE

DARE

FAIR

PAIR

BARE

CAN YOU THINK OF SOMETHING THAT RHYMES WITH…

LETTER

…?

BETTER

SWEATER

CAN YOU find a word THAT RHYMES WITH ‘PLAY’

Her feathers were neat and rounded,

down to her long, slender tail.

Whenever she saw Alice scooting,

she would swoop to grab her mail.

~Sofia Sparrowhawk

CAN YOU find a word THAT RHYMES WITH ‘TAIL’

Olive Otter had many cubs,

who loved to swim and play all day.

Each morning they teased each other,

but they would never ever stray.

~Olive Otter