Instruct students to write a few lines in response to the question, "Why do you think poets and singers use rhymes in their works?" This will get students to think more deeply about the topic. Have a few students share their answers with the class. You should get answers such as, "Rhymes make the poems easier to remember" or "Rhymes make the songs sound catchy."
Explain the word "rhyme" in an explicit manner, such as: A rhyme is when two or more words have similar sounds. There are many different kinds of rhyme, but for the purpose of this lesson, focus on "perfect rhyme," which means the sounds are perfectly duplicated in each word. Explain that there are two main types of perfect rhymes: masculine and feminine. Masculine rhymes have a repeated sound on the final stressed syllable of a word, such as floor/more, cheer/here, up/cup. Feminine rhymes have a repeated sound on the second to last stressed syllable, such as stinger/singer, treasure/pleasure, money/honey.
Warn students to avoid the very common mistake of rhyming unstressed syllables. If students are not already aware, explain that "stress" refers to the way we make certain syllables slightly louder and pronounce them slightly longer than others. For example, we say HAMM-er not Hamm-ER. This means that, while the words "taking" and "shaking" rhyme, the words "taking" and "thing" do not, because the syllable "ing" in "taking" is not stressed.
Teach students this simple trick to come up with a rhyme for any word. Have students write a word on a scrap sheet of paper. Tell students to find the final stressed syllable in the word and cut off all the letters before the vowel. Give students examples of both a masculine and a feminine rhyme, using "spoon" for your masculine rhyme (which will give you "oon") and "feather" for your feminine rhyme (which will give you "ether").
Instruct students to go through the alphabet with their clipped syllable and add different consonants to the front. Remind them to include compound consonant sounds, such as "ch," "sh" and "th." Students should also try adding the liquid sounds like "r," "l" or "w" after each consonant. For most sounds, this should produce a number of rhyming words or syllables that can form words. Model the trick using your examples. For "spoon," you should end up with boon, croon, dune, goon, loon, June, moon, noon, prune, rune, soon, strewn, swoon and tune. For "feather," you should get heather, leather, nether, tether, together, weather and whether.
Ask students to write a rhyming couplet using the word they chose. Explain that a couplet is two lines, whether in a poem or a song, where the last words rhyme. Have a few students share their couplets aloud.
Assign students two or three more couplets for homework, using different words than the ones they used in class. Have them share their work in class or collect the papers, but be sure you see a bit of each student's work to check for comprehension. You can also do this in class, depending on time available.