Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

Teaching Reading and Writing to Young Children

Gretchen S. Bernabei, Kayla Shook, Jayne Hover

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781506387949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Methods for Reading

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.

Lesson 1

Let’s Write!

Think about something unusual that may have happened at school or at home.

Quick List

• The fire truck came to school
• A lost tooth
• New family member
• A visit to a nurse or dentist

Text Structure: Not What I Thought Would Happen

A Diller, a Dollar

Kernel Essay

My Kernel: Sequoia Moved!

1. I can’t believe it.
2. You used to come over every day.
3. Now you live in California and you don’t come over after school.

Bonus!

Grammar and Spelling Connections

• used to
• questions
• compound sentences

Let’s Read!

A Diller, a Dollar: Nursery Rhyme

A diller, a dollar, a ten o’clock scholar,

What makes you come so soon?

You used to come at ten o’clock,

And now you come at noon.

Student Kernel: Not What I Thought Would Happen

Olivia Keyes, Prekindergarten

Student Kernel: Not What I Thought Would Happen

Rory Shook, Kindergarten

Connor McCorkle, Grade 1

Lesson 2

Let’s Write!

Think about someone you have seen who you recognized—someone “famous,” even locally.

Quick List

• Seeing Ronald McDonald
• Spotting their teacher at the grocery store
• Seeing someone surprising on TV
• The Cat in the Hat visited the school
• A veteran visited the school

Text Structure: Spotting Someone Famous

As I Was Going by Charing Cross

Kernel Essay

My Kernel: Seeing Snow White

1. I was walking around Disneyland.
2. I saw Snow White!
3. She was beautiful.

Bonus!

Grammar and Spelling Connections

• proper nouns
• ar, or, ir, ur (Charing, horse, first, burst)
• ea sounds (dear, heart, ready)
• AAAWWWUBIS
• exclamations
• ba-da-bing
• four colors

Glossary

AAAWWWUBIS*: subordinating conjunctions like after, although, as, while, when, wherever...