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Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes
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Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes
Teaching Reading and Writing to Young Children

Illustrations by Andrea Cotham

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September 2017 | 280 pages | Corwin

It’s one of education’s greatest challenges: How do we shape our youngest students, who often are just learning how to hold a pencil, into capable writers within the span of a single school year?

Text Structures from Nursery Rhymes offers the solution: a clear and actionable framework for guiding young students to write successfully in any style, from narrative to descriptive to persuasive.

The key to the strategy lies in using familiar text structures to break down a story into its main components — for example, “Where I was,” “Who I saw,” and “What I thought”  — in order to immediately thrust students into the role of the writer. 

This groundbreaking book provides 53 lessons, each centered around a classic nursery rhyme, and all the tools you’ll need to

  • Capitalize on the story’s rhythm and rhyme to make an instant connection with your students
  • Convey the story’s text structure using the lesson’s whimsical illustrations, providing a visual model that resonates with children
  • Lead the classroom in creating new stories — in words, pictures, or both — utilizing the text structure you’ve defined
  • Put each nursery rhyme to work as a springboard for important language-arts topics
  • Fine-tune your approach at every step based on your preferred teaching style and students’ progress

Put Text Structures from Nursery Rhymes to work in your classroom and discover how text structures, already a remarkable success in later grades, can also have a profound impact on younger students’ progress. 

Bonus!
Includes eight downloadable paper dolls—1 man, 1 woman, 1 girl, 1 boy, and 4 animals. Your students can use the paper dolls to retell the nursery rhymes, illustrate their own stories based on a nursery rhyme, or even to act out stories from other books in your classroom library.

 


 
Acknowledgments
 
Introduction
 
LESSON 1
Structure: Not What I Thought Would Happen

 
Nursery Rhyme: A Diller, a Dollar

 
 
LESSON 2
Structure: Spotting Someone Famous

 
Nursery Rhyme: As I Was Going by Charing Cross

 
 
LESSON 3
Structure: More Than One

 
Nursery Rhyme: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

 
 
LESSON 4
Structure: Something I Used to Have

 
Nursery Rhyme: Betty Pringle

 
 
LESSON 5
Structure: Someone Left

 
Nursery Rhyme: Bobby Shaftoe

 
 
LESSON 6
Structure: Big News!

 
Nursery Rhyme: Brave News Is Come to Town

 
 
LESSON 7
Structure: Where Did They Go?

 
Nursery Rhyme: Bye, Baby Bunting

 
 
LESSON 8
Structure: We Don’t Have What We Need—Problem/Solution

 
Nursery Rhyme: Cock a Doodle Do

 
 
LESSON 9
Structure: Something Happened

 
Nursery Rhyme: Fiddle-De-Dee

 
 
LESSON 10
Structure: Getting Caught

 
Nursery Rhyme: Georgie Porgie

 
 
LESSON 11
Structure: Travel Map

 
Nursery Rhyme: Goosey Goosey Gander

 
 
LESSON 12
Structure: What Everyone Was Doing at the Time—A Four-Person Snapshot

 
Nursery Rhyme: Hey Diddle Diddle

 
 
LESSON 13
Structure: Jump Scare

 
Nursery Rhyme: Hickory Dickory Dock

 
 
LESSON 14
Structure: What My Pet Might Do

 
Nursery Rhyme: Higglety Pigglety

 
 
LESSON 15
Structure: For Sale

 
Nursery Rhyme: Hot Cross Buns

 
 
LESSON 16
Structure: An Accident

 
Nursery Rhyme: Humpty Dumpty

 
 
LESSON 17
Structure: Someone Borrowed My _________

 
Nursery Rhyme: I Had a Little Pony

 
 
LESSON 18
Structure: What If

 
Nursery Rhyme: If All the World Were Apple Pie

 
 
LESSON 19
Structure: All About Something—A Description

 
Nursery Rhyme: I’m a Little Teapot

 
 
LESSON 20
Structure: Try, Try Again

 
Nursery Rhyme: The Itsy Bitsy Spider

 
 
LESSON 21
Structure: Ouch! That Hurt!

 
Nursery Rhyme: Jack and Jill

 
 
LESSON 22
Structure: Helping Someone

 
Nursery Rhyme: Jack Be Nimble

 
 
LESSON 23
Structure: Win-Win

 
Nursery Rhyme: Jack Sprat

 
 
LESSON 24
Structure: News Report

 
Nursery Rhyme: Ladybug, Ladybug

 
 
LESSON 25
Structure: Something Is Lost—Problem/Solution

 
Nursery Rhyme: Little Bo Peep

 
 
LESSON 26
Structure: What a Mess! Help!

 
Nursery Rhyme: Little Boy Blue

 
 
LESSON 27
Structure: Good Job!

 
Nursery Rhyme: Little Jack Horner

 
 
LESSON 28
Structure: Defining a Feeling

 
Nursery Rhyme: Little Jumping Joan

 
 
LESSON 29
Structure: My Short Story

 
Nursery Rhyme: Little Miss Muffet

 
 
LESSON 30
Structure: Three Questions

 
Nursery Rhyme: Little Tommy Tucker

 
 
LESSON 31
Structure: I Lost Something!

 
Nursery Rhyme: Lucy Locket

 
 
LESSON 32
Structure: Prized Possession

 
Nursery Rhyme: Mary Had a Little Lamb

 
 
LESSON 33
Structure: Polite Q and A

 
Nursery Rhyme: Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

 
 
LESSON 34
Structure: All About Someone—A Character Analysis

 
Nursery Rhyme: Old King Cole

 
 
LESSON 35
Structure: A Disappointment

 
Nursery Rhyme: Old Mother Hubbard

 
 
LESSON 36
Structure: Making Something

 
Nursery Rhyme: Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake

 
 
LESSON 37
Structure: Three Ways It Can Be

 
Nursery Rhyme: Pease Porridge Hot

 
 
LESSON 38
Structure: Happy Ending

 
Nursery Rhyme: Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater

 
 
LESSON 39
Structure: Change of Plans

 
Nursery Rhyme: Polly, Put the Kettle On

 
 
LESSON 40
Structure: Small Talk

 
Nursery Rhyme: Pussycat, Pussycat

 
 
LESSON 41
Structure: I Don’t Want That Right Now

 
Nursery Rhyme: Rain, Rain, Go Away

 
 
LESSON 42
Structure: From Good to Bad

 
Nursery Rhyme: Rock-a-Bye Baby

 
 
LESSON 43
Structure: Who’s That?

 
Nursery Rhyme: Rub-a-Dub-Dub

 
 
LESSON 44
Structure: New Job

 
Nursery Rhyme: Seesaw Margery Daw

 
 
LESSON 45
Structure: No, You Can’t Have My Things—A Dialogue

 
Nursery Rhyme: Simple Simon

 
 
LESSON 46
Structure: Something Crazy Happened

 
Nursery Rhyme: Sing a Song of Sixpence

 
 
LESSON 47
Structure: Fun Word Story

 
Nursery Rhyme: There Was a Crooked Man

 
 
LESSON 48
Structure: Problem That Can’t Be Fixed

 
Nursery Rhyme: There Was an Old Woman

 
 
LESSON 49
Structure: Going Shopping

 
Nursery Rhyme: To Market, to Market

 
 
LESSON 50
Structure: Somebody Broke a Rule

 
Nursery Rhyme: Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son

 
 
LESSON 51
Structure: The Fight

 
Nursery Rhyme: Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee

 
 
LESSON 52
Structure: Talking to Something—Personification

 
Nursery Rhyme: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

 
 
LESSON 53
Structure: Too Bossy

 
Nursery Rhyme: Wee Willie Winkie

 
 
Appendices
1. Complete Collection of 53 Text Structures

 
2. Text Structures for a Busy Town

 
3. Text Structures for Caring About Others

 
4. Text Structures for Feelings

 
5. Text Structures for Problem Solving

 
6. Text Structures for Travel

 
7. Text Structures for Unfairness

 
8. Text Structures Just for Fun

 
9. Text Structure Templates

 
10. Stationery Templates

 
 
About the Authors

Supplements

For instructors

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