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 What Your Colleagues Are Saying . . .

As a new kindergarten teacher, I found myself being totally overwhelmed with teaching my students how
to write. Let’s just face the facts—our kiddos come to us not knowing how to hold a pencil, and they are
expected to leave knowing how to write a story with a beginning, middle, and end. I had such a hard time
understanding how to get from point A to point B . . . until I was introduced to these amazing nursery
rhyme prompts and writing structures. It changed everything!

The nursery rhymes are such a fun and easy way to build those writing skills for little ones. My class loves
the nursery rhymes that we read before the writing activity—and I love it too, because it is an easy way to
build those text-to-self connections in a meaningful way. We usually complete one section of the writing
structure each day, and build on it throughout the week. Then, we revise and rewrite for the final copy. I
love the results every time. Another great thing about these writing activities is that they are often easy to
connect to other pieces of literature that are used in the classroom. For instance, I read the book Harold
B. Wigglebottom Learns About Bullying by Howard Binkow to my kiddos, and we used one of the nursery
rhyme activities as a reading response! It turned out so well!

—Kathryn Gibson, Kindergarten Teacher,

Conroe Independent School District, TX

I was thrilled to use the nursery rhyme writing tools in my gifted and talented program.
From kindergarten to fifth grade, the structures allowed students to see that
writing is not as hard as they had once thought! You could visibly see the excitement
rise as they explored, created, imagined, and composed their very own writing
samples—and it was fun! They began asking to do more, to go deeper, to create
more complex ideas, and as we continued using these tools, their writing
abilities grew from basic skills to more intricate and elaborate compositions.
Thank you for these resources!

—Julie Brawner, K–5 Teacher,

Oak Creek Elementary,
Comal Independent School District,
New Braunfels, TX

Finally, a resource that helps teachers build critical oral

language foundations with nursery rhymes while teaching
young students to practice writing with the same predictable
language structures. The reciprocal power of this approach
with classic rhymes is a game changer!

—Nicole Morales, Literacy Coach,

Ed White Elementary School,
Clear Creek Independent School District,
Houston, TX
For all the primary teachers who have longed for a
little more help with teaching writing.
Teachin g Re a d in g & Writing
Rhym
50+
to Young
Children Lesso e and
n Pair
s

Gretchen Bernabei
Kayla Shook
Jayne Hover
With Illustrations by Andrea Cotham

resources.corwin.com/nurseryrhymes
FOR INFORMATION: Copyright  2018 by Gretchen Bernabei, Kayla Shook, and Jayne Hover

All rights reserved. When forms and sample documents are included, their use
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Contents
Note: In this book, the lessons are organized alphabetically,
according to the title of the associated nursery rhyme.

Acknowledgments xii
Introduction xiii

LESSON 1 2
Structure: Not What I Thought Would Happen 2
Nursery Rhyme: A Diller, a Dollar 3

LESSON 2 6
Structure: Spotting Someone Famous 6
Nursery Rhyme: As I Was Going by Charing Cross 7

LESSON 3 10
Structure: More Than One 10
Nursery Rhyme: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep 11

LESSON 4 14
Structure: Something I Used to Have 14
Nursery Rhyme: Betty Pringle 15

LESSON 5 18
Structure: Someone Left 18
Nursery Rhyme: Bobby Shaftoe 19

LESSON 6 22
Structure: Big News! 22
Nursery Rhyme: Brave News Is Come to Town 23

LESSON 7 26
Structure: Where Did They Go? 26
Nursery Rhyme: Bye, Baby Bunting 27

LESSON 8 30
Structure: We Don’t Have What We Need—Problem/Solution 30
Nursery Rhyme: Cock a Doodle Do 31

LESSON 9 34
Structure: Something Happened 34
Nursery Rhyme: Fiddle-De-Dee 35
LESSON 10 38
Structure: Getting Caught 38
Nursery Rhyme: Georgie Porgie 39

LESSON 11 42
Structure: Travel Map 42
Nursery Rhyme: Goosey Goosey Gander 43

LESSON 12 46
Structure: What Everyone Was Doing at the Time—A Four-Person Snapshot 46
Nursery Rhyme: Hey Diddle Diddle 47

LESSON 13 50
Structure: Jump Scare 50
Nursery Rhyme: Hickory Dickory Dock 51

LESSON 14 54
Structure: What My Pet Might Do 54
Nursery Rhyme: Higglety Pigglety 55

LESSON 15 58
Structure: For Sale 58
Nursery Rhyme: Hot Cross Buns 59

LESSON 16 62
Structure: An Accident 62
Nursery Rhyme: Humpty Dumpty 63

LESSON 17 66
Structure: Someone Borrowed My _________ 66
Nursery Rhyme: I Had a Little Pony 67

LESSON 18 70
Structure: What If 70
Nursery Rhyme: If All the World Were Apple Pie 71

LESSON 19 74
Structure: All About Something—A Description 74
Nursery Rhyme: I’m a Little Teapot 75

LESSON 20 78
Structure: Try, Try Again 78
Nursery Rhyme: The Itsy Bitsy Spider 79

LESSON 21 82
Structure: Ouch! That Hurt! 82
Nursery Rhyme: Jack and Jill 83
LESSON 22 86
Structure: Helping Someone 86
Nursery Rhyme: Jack Be Nimble 87

LESSON 23 90
Structure: Win-Win 90
Nursery Rhyme: Jack Sprat 91

LESSON 24 94
Structure: News Report 94
Nursery Rhyme: Ladybug, Ladybug 95

LESSON 25 98
Structure: Something Is Lost—Problem/Solution 98
Nursery Rhyme: Little Bo Peep 99

LESSON 26 102
Structure: What a Mess! Help! 102
Nursery Rhyme: Little Boy Blue 103

LESSON 27 106
Structure: Good Job! 106
Nursery Rhyme: Little Jack Horner 107

LESSON 28 110
Structure: Defining a Feeling 110
Nursery Rhyme: Little Jumping Joan 111

LESSON 29 114
Structure: My Short Story 114
Nursery Rhyme: Little Miss Muffet 115

LESSON 30 118
Structure: Three Questions 118
Nursery Rhyme: Little Tommy Tucker 119

LESSON 31 122
Structure: I Lost Something! 122
Nursery Rhyme: Lucy Locket 123

LESSON 32 126
Structure: Prized Possession 126
Nursery Rhyme: Mary Had a Little Lamb 127

LESSON 33 130
Structure: Polite Q and A 130
Nursery Rhyme: Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary 131
LESSON 34 134
Structure: All About Someone—A Character Analysis 134
Nursery Rhyme: Old King Cole 135

LESSON 35 138
Structure: A Disappointment 138
Nursery Rhyme: Old Mother Hubbard 139

LESSON 36 142
Structure: Making Something 142
Nursery Rhyme: Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake 143

LESSON 37 146
Structure: Three Ways It Can Be 146
Nursery Rhyme: Pease Porridge Hot 147

LESSON 38 150
Structure: Happy Ending 150
Nursery Rhyme: Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater 151

LESSON 39 154
Structure: Change of Plans 154
Nursery Rhyme: Polly, Put the Kettle On 155

LESSON 40 158
Structure: Small Talk 158
Nursery Rhyme: Pussycat, Pussycat 159

LESSON 41 162
Structure: I Don’t Want That Right Now 162
Nursery Rhyme: Rain, Rain, Go Away 163

LESSON 42 166
Structure: From Good to Bad 166
Nursery Rhyme: Rock-a-Bye Baby 167

LESSON 43 170
Structure: Who’s That? 170
Nursery Rhyme: Rub-a-Dub-Dub 171

LESSON 44 174
Structure: New Job 174
Nursery Rhyme: Seesaw Margery Daw 175

LESSON 45 178
Structure: No, You Can’t Have My Things—A Dialogue 178
Nursery Rhyme: Simple Simon 179
LESSON 46 182
Structure: Something Crazy Happened 182
Nursery Rhyme: Sing a Song of Sixpence 183

LESSON 47 186
Structure: Fun Word Story 186
Nursery Rhyme: There Was a Crooked Man 187

LESSON 48 190
Structure: Problem That Can’t Be Fixed 190
Nursery Rhyme: There Was an Old Woman 191

LESSON 49 194
Structure: Going Shopping 194
Nursery Rhyme: To Market, to Market 195

LESSON 50 198
Structure: Somebody Broke a Rule 198
Nursery Rhyme: Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son 199

LESSON 51 202
Structure: The Fight 202
Nursery Rhyme: Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee 203

LESSON 52 206
Structure: Talking to Something—Personification 206
Nursery Rhyme: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 207

LESSON 53 210
Structure: Too Bossy 210
Nursery Rhyme: Wee Willie Winkie 211

Appendices215
1. Complete Collection of 53 Text Structures 216
2. Text Structures for a Busy Town 225
3. Text Structures for Caring About Others 226
4. Text Structures for Feelings 227
5. Text Structures for Problem Solving 228
6. Text Structures for Travel 229
7. Text Structures for Unfairness 230
8. Text Structures Just for Fun 231
9. Text Structure Templates 232
10. Stationery Templates 241

About the Authors 249

Visit the companion website at

online resources.corwin.com/nurseryrhymes
resources
for downloadable paper dolls,
text structures, templates, and other resources.
 Acknowledgments

For piloting our lessons and sharing their insights and student work, we owe deep
gratitude to the following teachers and school leaders: from Sippel Elementary, Lisa
Newman, Lenore Sassman, Serena Georges-Penny, Julie Olson, Nancy Schlather,
Shannon String, Connie Hernandez, Lori Kolodziejski, Andrea Vukela, Sunnye Krug,
Kelley Leeds, Michelle Oliver, Laura Kunz, Mandi Roper, and Michelle Myles; from
Thousand Oaks Elementary, Greta Hurley; from Stahl Elementary, Angie Mullinix; from
Blanco Elementary, Kristen Schultz, Mindy Lay, and Jowie Walker; from Oak Creek
Elementary, Heather Mizell and Julie Brawner; from Luling Primary School, Kathryn
Gibson.

We owe special thanks to Paul Erickson from Brookhaven Elementary and Malley
Johnson from Mary Lou Fisher Elementary School.

For her enthusiasm, encouragement, and organizational skills, we salute, embrace,

and adore Judi Reimer.

Thank you to our Lisa Luedeke, brilliant and dear, for believing in our work, knowing
our hearts, and understanding our lives. And thank you to the rest of our Corwin team:
Julie Nemer, Nicole Shade, Melanie Birdsall, Deanna Noga, and Gail Buschman, and to
Rebecca Eaton for your wisdom, both the practical and the whimsical.

From Jayne: Thank you, Jim, for encouraging me and cheering me on. You are not just
an amazing husband, you are a precious gift to me. I thank God every morning that I
get to wake up beside you.

From Kayla: Thank you, Paul, for being Super Dad while I worked long, late hours pur-
suing my dream of being an author. Thank you, Rory, for helping me understand how
nursery rhymes help kids like you and for inspiring me to be the best.

From Gretchen: Thank you Julian and Matilde ahead of me, and Granny Williams,
Nene, Sissie, and Aunt Ray behind me.

Finally, we feel grateful to those who came before us and created the nursery rhymes
from which the youngest of our students can become confident writers.

xii
Introduction

How This Book Began

Over the last 20 years, in the hundreds of teacher training sessions we’ve conducted
throughout the country we’ve heard one unanswered wish from the teachers of the
youngest grades: What have you got for us? Could you make some lessons for kinder-
garten? For pre-k? What about first graders?

We three talked with each other about how we had seen kindergarten teachers adapt
parts of our work for their students, often using our graphic icons and adding more
drawings.

Then, I watched Kayla teaching some of the simplest text structures and kernel essays
to teachers of second graders. I thought about the text structures we had gleaned from
pieces in American History for our secondary students and wondered what kinds of
texts would provide structures that would feel natural to our youngest kids. And when
Jayne explained to me about four- and five-year-olds’ developmental need for rhythm
and rhyme, the idea magically crystallized: We could extract the text structures from
nursery rhymes! And so we did.

We realized, though, that seeing written, boxed-up text structures wouldn’t do a

thing for children who don’t read yet, so we converted the text structures to illustra-
tions to match both the text structures and the nursery rhymes. We found a brilliant
artist in Andrea Cotham, who was able to convert the text structures into simple
and charming line drawings. Now we had text structures in two forms: words and
pictures. That way, students who read the drawings would begin to develop the
habits of visualizing a text progress from one chunk to the next, before they read a
single word!

Next, we sent the lessons out to classrooms, to teachers ready to try them out. We
asked them to see what worked best for them. They reacted and enthusiastically
returned to us an impressive variety of both student samples and teaching sequences.
We also taught the lessons to children, and we visited classrooms to observe, to see
for ourselves the impact of these lessons. If you teach young children, you will see the
pleasure that we witnessed as children play with these nursery rhymes, both chanting
them and using them to tell their own experiences.

Finally, we decided to add one more element to the lessons: the paper dolls. There
are any number of ways to use these concrete tools for both reading and writing, and
we offer a beginning set of ideas. The paper dolls are designed to be cut out, lami-
nated, and pasted onto popsicle sticks for classroom use. To access the downloadable
dolls and related teaching tips, visit the companion website at resources.corwin.com/
nurseryrhymes.

xiii
 How the Lessons Work
Here is what you will find for each lesson.

Each lesson has two pages. The writing lesson page is on the left side.

18 LET’S WRITE!

Quick List
What if you had
superpowers? What • What if pencils • What if flowers
changes would you could talk? could walk?
make?

Text Structure

What If

If . . . And if . . . And if . . . Then . . . ?

If All the World

Were Apple Pie

Kernel Essay

My Kernel: If I Could Go Anywhere

1. If I could go anywhere . . .
2. And if I could take anybody . . .
3. And if we could stay as long as we wanted . . .
4. Would we ever go to sleep?

Bonus!

Grammar and Spelling Connections

• ink • big AAAWWWUBIS
• ea, ee (subordinating
• h brothers (ch, sh, th) conjunctions like after,
although, as, while,
• -id word family
when, wherever, until,
• se vs. s because, if, since)
• cheese vs. trees

On this page, you will find the following:

• The text structure, written in boxes with words

• A “quick list” to jumpstart a conversation with your students about topics they
may have, topics that will work well with that text structure
• A sample “kernel essay,” which demonstrates the process of combining an
original topic with the text structure
• A grammar/conventions connection, listing language arts points you can find
in the nursery rhyme, for handy extension

xiv Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

The reading lesson page is on the right.

LET’S READ! 18

NURSERY RHYME
If All the World Were Apple Pie

If all the world were apple pie,

And all the sea were ink,
And all the trees were made of cheese,
What should we have for drink?

On this page, you will find

• one nursery rhyme;

• the same text structure as on the writing page, but with illustrations instead
of words; and
• large font for the beginning of each step in the text structure. These are
helpful when using pointers, which you can use to signal when to look to the next
picture. This will assist children with learning to track left to right.

Introduction xv
 We suggest using these lessons with the purpose of developing independent writers.
Here are some basic teaching steps:

1. Each lesson should begin with a reading of the nursery rhyme and a discussion
of the plot. Young students do not need in-depth teaching on each of the struc-
tures of the rhyme, but they do need exposure to academic vocabulary. Simply
referring to the plot and the characters of the rhyme exposes young readers
and writers to these terms. After reading the rhyme, you may wish to continue
reading it as a choral reading, talk about words that rhyme, or show the text
structure along with the reading.
2. After the rhyme is read and the plot discussed, you may choose to wait until
the following day to continue with a writing activity. We suggest spending
1 to 2 weeks on each rhyme.
3. Once the text structure is introduced, we suggest writing a class version. In
pre-k and kindergarten, this may be the extent of the writing activity for each
rhyme.
4. If students are ready, the next step is for students in small groups to create
their own version.
5. When students are confident enough, they move on to independent work or
work with a buddy.

You will notice text structures with different numbers of boxes. It might be help-
ful to begin with the rhymes that use three boxes, because these have a simpler
structure. There is no particular order for going through these lessons. In fact, it might
be beneficial to take advantage of an everyday experience and then find a structure that
matches. For example, after a holiday weekend, Ms. Johnson used “Bye, Baby
Bunting” and the text structure “Where did they go?” She knew her students had just
said goodbye to many visiting grandparents and family members who gathered over
the weekend. The structure gave the children the opportunity to say things like “My
grandmother went home. She gave me a new blanket. I wish she would come back.”

A few more examples of typical classroom experiences and useful text structures
might include:

a guest speaker in the classroom Polite Q and A

(Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary)
a rained-out event A Disappointment
(Old Mother Hubbard)
someone went on a trip Small Talk (Pussycat, Pussycat)
someone loses something I Lost Something! (Lucy Lockett)
someone got hurt Ouch! That Hurt! (Jack and Jill)

We know pre-k and kindergarten students do not necessarily tell stories in order,
and these structures help develop that skill. To support the development of younger
students, these lessons provide the structure in pictures first, then labeling, adult

xvi Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

transcription, and finally independent student writing. As students acquire writing
competencies in Grades 1 and 2, you can skip steps like transcription and “reading”
the picture structures, using the word structures instead and independent writing. You
will find various template pages to use throughout this process. Differentiate by choos-
ing the processes and templates that work best for your individual students.

This book makes use of nursery rhymes to teach patterns and structures of writing.
As you travel through this book, you will see familiar rhymes from your childhood
and some not so familiar. You will notice we are using rhymes from English-speaking
countries only. Rhymes from other countries do not translate with rhyme and rhythm,
which makes them not useful for our purposes.

To enhance the process, we have also included language arts extensions such as
grammar suggestions. Example: You might teach -ck following short vowels when
looking at Jack Be Nimble.

As students create whole class, small group, and individual versions of the rhymes,
they are assembling their own nursery rhyme book. As you experience these text
structures with your students, consider helping them create their own book to share
with their family.

The following are student examples from various age groups, using various kinds of
stationery. Some show the nursery rhyme converted to kernel essays; some show orig-
inal drawings and teacher transcriptions; some show original writing that follows the
text structure; some student work follows a different drummer. The point isn’t so much
that they follow the structure of the nursery rhyme as it is to give students a scaffold
to create a story that has a structure.

Two teachers shared their detailed methods.

Paul Erickson’s Pre-K Classroom

Paul began by gathering his pre-k class to the carpet, where they read the nursery
rhyme three ways. First he read, then they echo-read, then they all read together.

Next, he worked on the first part of the text structure (in this case, the first line).

Introduction xvii
 He flipped to the next page on the chart tablet, where he had already written the
line. “Now, what do you picture? What does that look like to you?”

Students raised their hands and answered what shoes they visualized, what they
thought the old woman looked like, and he drew their ideas.
He did this on a separate page for each part of the nursery rhyme.

“How many children do you think she had?” Paul solicited ideas for the drawings,
and the children watched their contributions become part of the drawings.

“She had no bread . . . okay. What do you think broth is?”

xviii Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

By the time they got to the last chunk of text, the students had become very
familiar with the text and with the practice of drawing their thinking. It was fun!

After this process, he brought out the text structure on a new sheet of paper and
the children worked through it together, creating their own (group) composition.

“Let’s see . . . where might I have been?” Students brainstormed “The bank!” “The
basement” “At home!” Paul wrote them all down. Together, they selected (and
circled) one, then went to the next step and repeated the process.

By the time he finished all four squares, the group had created a story.

After this, he allowed the children to take a clipboard and draw their own
stories.

They drew, then showing him their drawings, told all about the drawing.

He recorded them to post digitally for parents to access. Several of his students’
pieces are featured in this book.

Later, he would redraw a cleaned-up copy of the group composition. These were
all around his room from previous days.

(Continued)

Introduction xix
 (Continued)

Paul created this graphic to show his process, starting with the “Read the Nursery
Rhyme” step.

Nursery Rhyme Essays

Students Write
The students will draw a picture
Teacher and Students relating to their personal
Edit the Draft experience with the prompt.
The students will dictate responses.
The teacher will read the draft As the year progresses, the students
to the students, then will read it will begin to label and write words
again and pause during certain and phrases.
points to add elements to the
story. The teacher will ask
students to add more visual
details (five senses), story
elements (mostly beginning Teacher Writes
and end), or personal feelings
to the draft. The teacher takes the parts
of the brainstorming and puts them
together into one writing piece.

Brainstorm Using Kernel Essay

Read the Nursery Rhyme
Read the first section of the frame.
Read the poem four times. Have the students brainstorm ideas
1. I read, you listen. that fit the prompt. The teacher
2. I read, you echo. will write the ideas on the chart.
3. We read together. The teacher will select one of the
ideas to continue with to the next
frame.
During the fourth read, the teacher
will read the poem line by line. Read the next section. Tell the
After reading each line, the teacher students that they are going to focus
will prompt the students to on just the idea that was selected
describe what the teacher should in the previous section. Have the
draw to help visualize the line. students brainstorm ideas for the
The teacher will draw the pictures. next section. Repeat with the rest
of the sections.

xx Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

 From Malley Johnson, Kindergarten–Grade 2
Here is how I taught each lesson to the kids at different grade levels.

1. First, we read the nursery rhyme for enjoyment. We then did some choral
reading and/or shared reading. We looked for things such as rhyming
words, sight words, capital letters, and so on.

2. Then we went through each line that aligned with the text structure. We
discussed vocabulary and what each line meant. The kids shared what
they thought it meant, either through visualizing it or discussion. Then
we illustrated each part. We did this for each part of the text structure.

As we discussed, I made sure to use the same words used in the text
structure, so when we were ready to write, they were prepared. For
example, for “To Market, to Market,” first I bought _______, next I bought
_______, last I bought _______.

(Continued)

Introduction xxi
 (Continued)

3. Next, we looked at the text structure. We discussed what we could write

about, what item we could make, and three ingredients needed to make it.
Once we agreed on a topic, we went through each stage of the text structure
and formed our sentences together. We even did our illustrations together.

4. Students then were given a chance to think about their own topic. Then
they turned and shared with their partner. They did this with each part of
the text structure. Thought about it, paired up, and shared their ideas.
5. Then they wrote!

I think for the first time ever there wasn’t a single student who said, “I don’t know
what to write about!” The structure was so laid out for them and ideas so simple
to share and discuss. It still blows me away.

xxii Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

Solutions to Writing Problems in the Early Grades
Problem 1: Nonverbal Children

We know it’s difficult to teach writing to children who aren’t very verbal, those who
are mostly quiet. Talking is a great solution. Use the nursery rhymes, reading them
aloud, pointing at words with puppets, pretending the puppets are reading. Giving the
children practice in the oral texts of nursery rhymes enriches their text inventory, while
using rhyme and rhythm and teaching the patterns and fun of language.

Problem 2: Canned Writing Programs

Another problem is finding a balance between too-prescribed teaching and too-

unstructured workshop time. Canned programs leave teachers feeling handcuffed, and
the students are not engaged; yet teachers need some guidance. This set of lessons
provides a solution, giving teachers plenty of concrete steps, with loads of flexibility.

Problem 3: Students Learn to Hate

Writing as Soon as It’s Academic
We don’t think there is enough transition between fun “pretend” writing and academic
writing. This book bridges that gap. Following a structure is absolutely academic, but
it has all the fun of pretending, of whimsical rhymes, of rich out-loud sharing.

Quotes From Our Hall of Fame Writing Theorists

Since these favorites of ours led us to create this book, we would like to share a few of
their guiding thoughts.

Mem Fox

There’s Mem Fox (2008), who teaches us that reading should be enjoyable. A snuggly,
warm, singing kind of young experience. Further, she teaches us the importance of
rhythm and rhyme for children.

Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know
eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually
among the best readers by the time they’re eight. (p. 89)

And just what do students gain?

Once children have masses of rhythmic gems like these in their heads, they’ll
have a huge store of information to bring to the task of learning to read, a nice
fat bank of language—words, phrases, structures, and grammar. The words in
their heads then begin to drift into their daily speech, and all at once we have
an articulate child. (p. 93)

Donald Graves

Canned writing programs are not the answer. Donald Graves suggests that teachers who
only have one day a week for writing should not teach writing at all. “You will encourage
poor habits in your students and they will only learn to dislike writing” (Newkirk, 2009).
Creating a classroom with fertile conditions is the way, where students have daily time

Introduction xxiii
 and lots of choices. In fact, the three “pillars of writing instruction,” according to Graves,
are “choice, time and response” (Newkirk, 2009, p. 175). All three can be built into these
lessons—and should be.

Lev Vygotsky

Some people think that play serves the purpose of recreation, but for young children
play provides a much wider background for changes in needs and consciousness.
“Action in the imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of voluntary
intentions, and the formation of real-life plans and volitional motives—all appear in
play and make it the highest level of preschool development. The child moves forward
essentially through play activity” (Vygotsky, p. 102).

In imaginative play, a child “reads” a play environment and “composes” within it.
“Creating an imaginary situation can be regarded as a means of developing abstract
thought” (Vygotsky, p. 103).

In play, a “new relation is created between the field of meaning and the visual field—that
is, between situations in thought and real situations” (Vygotsky, p. 104). This leads to
another remarkable thought about the importance of play: A child voluntarily submits
to a system of rules, even as “rules of pretend.” This is something that Vygotsky regards
as an important marker in the child’s development of will, of consciousness, and later,
of morals.

As a child matures, the play continues. The child starts to skip steps, skipping the
“acting it out” part and the playacting becomes internal, known as imagination.
A “what if” becomes part of this process.

In writing, that “what if” becomes a part of the writing process. Remembering is a kind
of pretending, and inventing the future is pretending, too.

With the introduction of right or wrong answers, or right or wrong writing, all play
comes to a halt, and the only “what ifs” are anxiety-filled and not growth-producing.
They can result in the groan coming from students when it is “writing time.”

John Hattie

When we see the impact of our teaching actions, we can tell how we are doing. John
Hattie summarizes his remarkable syntheses of voluminous research in a talk, leaving
the most powerful challenge to teachers: to use what he calls the Kenny Rogers Theory
of Learning.

“The most impactful teachers are those who continually and effectively and collec-
tively evaluate their impact on students” (Hattie, 2017). This will lead to knowing when
to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.

James Moffett

The only way to know when to do anything with students is by paying attention to them
and, in the words of the educational titan James Moffett (1987), “heeding better the
feedback we get about the consequences of our own teaching actions” (p. 210).

***

xxiv Text Structures From Nursery Rhymes

Some teachers start with the nursery rhymes.
Some teachers start with students’ experience.
Some end up with nursery rhymes the students know by heart.
Some end up with group-written original pieces.
Some end up with student-written original pieces.
Some end up using the structures to write about a different story.
Some end up with student drawings and conversations about the drawings.

As Thomas Newkirk tells us, “Teaching is profoundly situational.” And so teachers may
use whatever parts, whatever sequence they find useful for their own students on any
particular day.

We hope you enjoy reminiscing with us through these wonderful nursery rhymes and
that you create your own memories with your students.

References
Fox, M. (2008). Reading magic: Why reading aloud to our children will change their lives forever.
Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
Hattie, J. (2017). It takes a teacher: A talk by John Hattie. Retrieved from https://educationonair
.withgoogle.com/live/2016-dec/watch/keynote-au.
Moffett, J. (1987). Teaching the universe of discourse. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Newkirk, T. (2009). Holding on to good ideas in a time of bad ones: Six literacy principles
worth fighting for. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Introduction xxv
Lessons
 1 LET’S WRITE!

Quick List
Think about
something unusual • The fire truck • New family member
that may have came to school • A visit to a nurse
happened at school • A lost tooth or dentist
or at home.

Text Structure

Not What I Thought Would Happen

How surprised What you What you

I am used to do do now

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 • compound
• questions sentences

2 Lesson 1
 LET’S READ! 1

NURSERY RHYME
A Diller, a Dollar

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.

Not What I Thought Would Happen 3

 STUDENT KERNEL
Not What I Thought Would Happen

Olivia Keyes, Prekindergarten

4 Lesson 1
 STUDENT KERNEL
Not What I Thought Would Happen

Rory Shook, Kindergarten

Connor McCorkle, Grade 1

Not What I Thought Would Happen 5

 2 LET’S WRITE!

Quick List
Think about someone
• Seeing Ronald • The Cat in the Hat
you have seen who
McDonald visited the school
you recognized—
• Spotting their • A veteran visited
someone “famous,”
teacher at the the school
even locally. grocery store
• Seeing someone
surprising on TV

Text Structure

Spotting Someone Famous

Where I was Who I saw What I thought

As I Was Going by
Charing Cross

Kernel Essay

My Kernel: Seeing Snow White Glossary

1. I was walking around Disneyland. AAAWWWUBIS*: subordinating

conjunctions like after, although, as, while,
2. I saw Snow White! when, wherever, until, because, if, since

3. She was beautiful. ba-da-bing*: a sentence containing three

parts: what your feet were doing, what
your eye saw, and what you thought
Bonus! four colors**: color coding a text to show
talking (pink), seeing (blue), doing (green),
and thinking (yellow)
Grammar and Spelling Connections
pitchforking*: embedding lists in writing
• proper nouns • AAAWWWUBIS *For more information, see Grammar
Keepers by Gretchen Bernabei (Corwin,
• ar, or, ir, ur • exclamations 2015).
(Charing, horse, • ba-da-bing **For more information, see Fun-Size
first, burst) • four colors Academic Writing for Serious Learning
by Gretchen Bernabei and Judi Reimer
• ea sounds (dear, (Corwin, 2013).
heart, ready)

6 Lesson 2
 LET’S READ! 2

NURSERY RHYME
As I Was Going by Charing Cross

As I was going by Charing Cross,

I saw a black man upon a black horse.
They told me it was King Charles the First,

Oh dear! My heart was ready to burst!

Spotting Someone Famous 7

 STUDENT KERNEL
Spotting Someone Famous

Willard Schultz, Grade 2

Christine Flores, Grade 2

8 Lesson 2
 STUDENT KERNEL
Spotting Someone Famous

Jackson House, Grade 2

Brooklyn Rhodes, Grade 2

Spotting Someone Famous 9

 3 LET’S WRITE!

Quick List
Think about how
everyone has more • Toys • Snacks
than one of some • Games • Rocks
things. • Shoes • Collections

Text Structure

More Than One

Question: Answer:
Do you have Yes, I have List them.
_______________? _______________.

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

Kernel Essay

My Kernel: Stuffed Animals

1. Do you have stuffed animals?
2. Yes, I have stuffed animals.
3. I have a pink bunny, four mice, one dolphin, and
two fluffy puppies.

Bonus!

Grammar and Spelling Connections

• alliteration • pitchforking (embedding
• question/answer lists in writing)

• ull/ool (full, wool) • commas in a series

10 Lesson 3
 LET’S READ! 3

NURSERY RHYME
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.

More Than One 11

 STUDENT KERNEL
More Than One

Austin Lea, Prekindergarten

Kruz Znidarsic, Kindergarten

12 Lesson 3
 STUDENT KERNEL
More Than One

Jackson Lecce, Grade 2

Miranda Million, Teacher

More Than One 13

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
the streets to observe his dignified figure as he passed; and strangers
who went to hear him preach were struck no less by the beauty of his
appearance in the pulpit, the graceful fall of the silver locks round his
fine head and sensitive face, than by the Pauline earnestness of his
doctrine. At that time, the phrase “Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh,” if
used in any part of Scotland away from the metropolis, would have
been taken as designating this venerable Calvinistic clergyman, and
not his son.
The son, meanwhile, it is true, was becoming well enough known
within Edinburgh on his own account. Having been educated at the
High School and the University, and having chosen the medical
profession, and been apprenticed for some time to the famous
surgeon, Syme, he had taken his degree of M.D. in 1833, and had
then,—with no other previous medical experience out of Edinburgh
than a short probation among the sailors at Chatham,—settled down
permanently in Edinburgh for medical practice. From that date,
therefore, on to the time when I can draw upon my own first
recollections of him,—say about 1846,—there had been two Dr. John
Browns in Edinburgh, the father and the son, the theological doctor
and the medical doctor. It was the senior or theological doctor, as I
have said, that was then still the “Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh” par
excellence, and the name had not transferred itself to the younger
with its new signification. He was then about thirty-six years of age,
with some little practice as a physician; and my remembrance of him
at that time is of a darkish-haired man, of shorter stature than his
father, with fine soft eyes, spirited movement, and very benignant
manner, the husband of a singularly beautiful young wife, and
greatly liked and sought after in the Edinburgh social circles in which
he and she appeared. This was partly from the charm of his vivid
temperament and conversation, and partly because of a reputation
for literary ability that had been recently gathering round him on
account of occasional semi-anonymous articles of his in newspapers
and periodicals, chiefly art-criticisms. For the hereditary genius of
“The Browns of Haddington” had, in this fourth generation of them,
turned itself out of the strictly theological direction, to work in new
ways. While Dr. Samuel Brown, a younger cousin of our Dr. John,
had been astonishing Edinburgh by his brilliant speculations in
Chemistry, Dr. John himself, in the midst of what medical practice
came in his way, had been toying with Literature. Toying only it had
been at first, and continued to be for a while; but, by degrees,—and
especially after 1847, when the editorship of the North British
Review, which had been founded in 1844, passed into the hands of
his friend Dr. Hanna,—his contributions to periodical literature
became more various and frequent. At length, in 1858, when he was
forty-eight years of age, and had contributed pretty largely to the
periodical named and to others, he came forth openly as an author,
by publishing a volume of what he called his Horæ Subsecivæ,
consisting mainly of medical biographies and other medico-literary
papers collected from the said periodicals, but including also his
immortal little Scottish idyll called “Rab and His Friends.” His father
had died in that year, so that thenceforward, if people chose, the
designation “Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh” could descend to the son
without ambiguity.
And it did so descend. For eleven years before that appearance
of the first collection of his Horæ Subsecivæ, with “Rab and His
Friends” included in it, I had been resident in London, and I
remained there for seven years more. During all those eighteen
years, therefore, my direct opportunities of cultivating his
acquaintance had ceased; and, while I could take note through the
press of the growth of his literary reputation, it was only by hearsay
at a distance, or by a letter or two that passed between us, or by a
glimpse of him now and then when I came north on a visit, that I was
kept aware of his Edinburgh doings and circumstances. Not till the
end of 1865, when I resumed residence in Edinburgh, were we
brought again into close neighbourhood and intercourse. Then,
certainly, I found him, at the age of five-and-fifty, as completely and
popularly our “Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh” in the new sense as
ever his father had been in the old one. His pen had been still busy in
newspapers and periodicals, the subjects ranging away more and
more from the medical; another volume of his Horæ Subsecivæ, or
collected articles, had been published; and some of his papers,
selected from that volume or its predecessor, or taken more directly
from the manuscript, had been brought out separately, in various
forms, under the discerning care of his friend and publisher, Mr.
David Douglas, and had been in circulation almost with the rapidity
of one of the serial parts of a novel by Dickens. Of both his
Minchmoor and his Jeems the Doorkeeper more than 10,000 copies
had been sold; his Pet Marjorie had passed the sale of 15,000 copies;
and Rab and His Friends was already in its 50th thousand.
With all this applause beating in upon him from the reading
public, in Scotland, in England, and in America, there he still was in
his old Edinburgh surroundings: a widower now for some years,
domesticated with his two children, and more solitary in his habits
than he had been; but to be seen walking along Princes Street of a
forenoon, or sometimes at some hospitable dinner-table of an
evening, always the same simple, wise, benevolent, lovable, and
much-loved Dr. John. And so for sixteen years more, and to the very
end. The sixties crept upon him after the fifties, and the white touch
of the first seventies followed, and the vivid darkish-haired Dr. John
of my first memory had changed into the bald-headed and spectacled
veteran you may see in the later photographs,—the spectacles before
his fine eyes if he were looking to the front, but raised over the placid
forehead if he were looking downwards at a print or a book. But
these changes had come softly, and with a mellowing rather than
withering effect; and, as late as last winter, what veteran was there in
our community whose face and presence in any company was more
desired or gave greater pleasure? If a stranger of literary tastes
visited Edinburgh, about whom did he inquire more curiously, or
whom was he more anxious to see, if possible, than Dr. John Brown?
We knew, most of us, that his calm face concealed sorrows; we
remembered his long widowerhood; we were aware too of the
occasional glooms and depressions that withdrew him from common
society; but, when he did appear among us, whether in any public
gathering or in more private fashion, how uniformly cheerful he was,
how bright and sunny! It has been stated, in one obituary notice of
him, that his medical practice declined as his literary reputation
increased. I doubt the truth of the statement, and imagine that the
reverse might be nearer the truth. To the end he loved his profession;
to the end he practised it; to the end there were not a few families, in
and about Edinburgh, who would have no other medical attendant, if
they could help it, than their dear and trusted Dr. John. My
impression rather is that he was wrapt up in his profession more and
more in his later days, using his pen only for a new trifle now and
then as the whim struck him, and content in the main with the
continued circulation of his former writings or their reissue in new
shapes. It was on the 12th of April in the present year, or only a
month before his death, that he put the last prefatory touch to the
first volume of that new edition of his Horæ Subsecivæ in three
volumes in which his complete literary remains are now accessible.
The title Horæ Subsecivæ, borrowed by Dr. John from the title-
pages of some old volumes of the minor English literature of the
seventeenth century, indicates, and was intended to indicate, the
nature of his writings. They are all “Leisure Hours,” little things done
at times snatched from business. There are between forty and fifty of
them in all, none of them long, and most of them very short. It is vain
in his case to repeat the regret, so common in similar cases, that the
author did not throw his whole strength into some one or two
suitable subjects, and produce one or two important works. By
constitution, I believe, no less than by circumstances, Dr. John
Brown was unfitted for large and continuous works, and was at home
only in short occasional papers. One compensation is the spontaneity
of his writings, the sense of immediate throb and impulse in each.
Every paper he wrote was, as it were, a moment of himself, and we
can read his own character in the collected series.
A considerable proportion of his papers, represented most
directly by his Plain Lectures on Health addressed to Working
People, his little essay entitled Art and Science, and his other little
essays called Excursus Ethicus and Education through the Senses,
but also by his Locke and Sydenham and others of his sketches of
eminent physicians, are in a didactic vein. Moreover, they are all
mainly didactic on one string. When these papers are read, it is
found that they all propound and illustrate one idea, which had taken
such strong hold of the author that it may be called one of his
characteristics. It is the idea of the distinction or contrast between
the speculative, theoretical, or scientific habit of mind, and the
practical or active habit. In medical practice and medical education,
more particularly, Dr. John Brown thought there had come to be too
much attention to mere science, too much faith in mere increase of
knowledge and in exquisiteness of research and apparatus, and too
little regard for that solid breadth of mind, that soundness of
practical observation and power of decision in emergencies, that
instinctive or acquired sagacity, which had been conspicuous among
the best of the older physicians. As usual, he has put this idea into
the form of humorous apologue:—
 A DIALOGUE.
Scene.—Clinical wards of Royal Infirmary. The Physician and his Clerk
loquuntur.
John Murdoch, in the clinical ward with thoracic aneurism of the aorta, had at
his bedside a liniment of aconite, etc. Under the stress of a paroxysm of pain, he
drank it off, and was soon dead.
Physician.—Well, Sir, what about Murdoch? Did you see him alive?
Clerk.—Yes, Sir.
Physician.—Did you feel his pulse?
Clerk.—No, Sir.
Physician.—Did you examine his eyes?
Clerk.—No, Sir.
Physician.—Did you observe any frothing at the mouth and nose?
Clerk.—No, Sir.
Physician.—Did you count his respirations?
Clerk.—No, Sir.
Physician.—Then, Sir, what the d——l did you do?
Clerk.—I ran for the stomach-pump.
Dr. John was never tired of inculcating this distinction; it is the
backbone of almost all those papers of his that have been just
mentioned, and it reappears in others. In his special little essay
called Art and Science he formulates it thus:—
IN MEDICINE

Science

Looks to essence and cause.

Is diagnostic.
Has a system.
Is post-mortem.
Looks to structure more than function.
Studies the phenomena of poisoning.
Submits to be ignorant of nothing.
Speaks.

Art

Looks to symptoms and occasions.

Is therapeutic and prognostic.
Has a method.
 Is ante-mortem.
Looks to function more than structure.
Runs for the stomach-pump.
Submits to be ignorant of much.
Acts.

Now, in the particular matter in question, so far as it is here

represented, we should, doubtless, all agree with our friend. We
should all, for ourselves, in serious illness, infinitely prefer the
attendance of any tolerable physician of the therapeutic and
prognostic type to that of the ablest of the merely diagnostic type,
especially if we thought that the genius of the latter inclined him to a
post-mortem examination. Hence we may be disposed to think that
Dr. John did good service in protesting against the run upon science,
ever new science, in the medicine of his day, and trying to hark back
the profession to the good old virtues of vigorous rule of thumb.
What I detect, however, underneath all his expositions of this
possibly salutary idea, and prompting to his reiterations of it, is
something deeper. It is a dislike in his own nature to the abstract or
theoretical in all matters whatsoever. Dr. John Brown’s mind, I
should say, was essentially anti-speculative. His writings abound, of
course, with tributes of respect to science and philosophy, and
expressions of astonishment and gratitude for their achievements;
but it may be observed that the thinkers and philosophers to whom
he refers most fondly are chiefly those older magnates, including
Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Bishop Butler among the English, whose
struggle was over long ago, whose results are an accepted
inheritance, and who are now standards of orthodoxy. All later drifts
of speculative thought, and especially the latest drifts of his own day,
seem to have made him uncomfortable. He actually warns against
them as products of what he calls “the lust of innovation.” This is a
matter of so much consequence in the study of Dr. John Brown’s
character that it ought not to be passed over lightly.
There can be no doubt that his dislike of the purely speculative
spirit, and especially of recent speculation of certain kinds, was
rooted in some degree in the fine devoutness of his nature, his
unswerving fidelity to his inherited religion. The system of beliefs
which had been consecrated for him so dearly and powerfully by the
lives and example of his immediate progenitors was still
substantially that with which he went through the world himself,
though it had been softened in the course of transmission, stripped
of its more angular and sectarian features, and converted into a
contemplative Religio Medici, not unlike that of his old English
namesake, the philosopher and physician of Norwich. Like that
philosopher, for whom he had all the regard of a felt affinity, he
delighted in an O altitudo!, craved the refuge of an O altitudo! in all
the difficulties of mere reason, and held that in that craving itself
there is the sure gleam for the human spirit of the one golden key
that unlocks those difficulties. A difference, however, between him
and old Browne of Norwich is that he had much less of clear and
definite thought, of logical grasp of prior propositions and
reasonings, with which to prepare for an altitudo, justify it, and prop
it up. Take as a specimen a passage relating to that very distinction
between Art and Science which he valued so much:—
“It may be thought that I have shown myself, in this parallel and contrast, too
much of a partisan of Art as against Science, and the same may be not unfairly said
of much of the rest of this volume. It was in a measure on purpose,—the general
tendency being counteractive of the purely scientific and positive, or merely
informative, current of our day. We need to remind ourselves constantly that this
kind of knowledge puffeth up, and that it is something quite else that buildeth up.
It has been finely said that Nature is the Art of God, and we may as truly say that
all Art,—in the widest sense, as practical and productive,—is His Science. He knows
all that goes to the making of everything; for He is Himself, in the strictest sense,
the only maker. He knows what made Shakespeare and Newton, Julius Cæsar and
Plato, what we know them to have been; and they are His by the same right as the
sea is His, and the strength of the hills, for He made them and His hands formed
them, as well as the dry land. This making the circle for ever meet, this bringing
Omega eternally round to Alpha, is, I think, more and more revealing itself as a
great central, personal, regulative truth, and is being carried down more than ever
into the recesses of physical research, where Nature is fast telling her long-kept
secrets: all her tribes speaking, each in their own tongue, the wonderful works of
God,—the sea saying ‘It is not in me,’ everything giving up any title to anything like
substance, beyond being the result of one Supreme Will. The more chemistry, and
electrology, and life, are searched into by the keenest and most remorseless
experiment, the more do we find ourselves admitting that motive power and force,
as manifested to us, is derived, is in its essence immaterial, is direct from Him in
whom we live and move, and to whom, in a sense quite peculiar, belongeth power.”
This is fine, it is eloquent, it is likeable; but one cannot call it
lucid. Indeed, if interpreted literally, it is incoherent, for the end
contradicts the beginning. “Abstain from excess of theory or
speculation,” it substantially says, “for theory and speculation, when
prosecuted to the very utmost, lead to a profound religiousness.”
This is the only verbal construction of the passage; but it is the very
opposite of what was meant.
It is much the same with Dr. John Brown in smaller matters. If
he wants a definition or a distinction on any subject, he generally
protests first against the desire for definitions and distinctions,
maintaining the superiority of healthy practical sense and feeling
over mere theory; then he produces, in his own words, some “middle
axiom,” or passable first-hand notion on the subject, as sufficient for
the purpose if anything theoretical is wanted; and then he proceeds
to back this up by interesting quotations from favourite and
accredited authors. In short, Dr. John Brown lived in an element of
the “middle propositions,” the accredited axioms, on all subjects, and
was impatient of reasoning, novelty of theory, or search for ultimate
principles. It is but the same thing in another form,—though it
deserves separate statement,—to say that he disliked controversy. He
shrank from controversy in all matters, social as well as intellectual;
was irritated when it came near him; and kept rather on the
conservative side in any new “cause” or “movement” that was
exciting his neighbourhood. Perhaps the most marked exception in
his writings to this disposition to rest in existing social
arrangements, and also to his prevailing dislike of speculation, was
his assertion of his unhesitating assent to that extreme development
of Adam Smith’s doctrines which would abolish the system of state-
licensing for particular professions, or at all events for the profession
of Medicine. He advocates this principle more than once in his
papers, and he signifies his adherence to it in almost the last words
he wrote. “I am more convinced than ever,” he says in the prefatory
note to the collected edition of his Horæ Subsecivæ, “of the futility
and worse of the Licensing System, and think, with Adam Smith, that
a mediciner should be as free to exercise his gifts as an architect or a
mole-catcher. The public has its own shrewd way of knowing who
should build its house or catch its moles, and it may quite safely be
left to take the same line in choosing its doctor.” This is bold enough,
and speculative enough; but the fact is that this acceptance of the
principle of absolute laissez-faire, or non-interference of the state, or
any other authority, in Medicine, or in any analogous art or craft, was
facilitated for him by his hereditary Voluntaryism in Church matters,
and indeed came to him ready-made in that form. What is
surprising, and what corroborates our view of the essentially non-
theoretical character of his intellect, is the unsystematic manner in
which he was content to hold his principle, his failure to carry it out
consistently, his apparent inability to perceive the full sweep of its
logical consequences. Thus, to the words just quoted he appends
these,—“Lawyers, of course, are different, as they have to do with the
state, with the law of the land.” Was there ever a more innocent non
sequitur? If any one may set up as a curer of diseases and make a
living in that craft by charging fees from those who choose to employ
him, why may not any one set up as a lawyer, and why may not I
select and employ any one I please to plead my cause in court,
instead of being bound to employ one of a limited number of wigged
and gowned gentlemen?
If, then, it was not in theory or speculation that Dr. John Brown
excelled,—and that there was no deficiency of hereditary speculative
faculty in his family, but much the reverse, is proved not only by the
theological distinction of his predecessors in the family, and by the
brilliant career of his cousin, Dr. Samuel Brown, but also by the
reputation among us at this moment of his still nearer relative, the
eminent Philosophical Chemist of Edinburgh University,—in what
was it that he did excel? It was in what I may call an unusual
appreciativeness of all that did recommend itself to him as good and
admirable. In few men has there been such a fulfilment of the
memorable apostolic injunction: “Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report,—if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise,—think on these things.” The context of that passage shows
that what was enjoined on the Philippians was a habit of meditative
and ruminative appreciation of all that was noteworthy, of every
variety, within accredited and prescribed limits. Dr. John Brown was
a model in this respect. Within the limits of his preference for the
concrete and practical over the abstract and theoretical, he was a
man of peculiarly keen relish for anything excellent, and of peculiar
assiduity in imparting his likings to others.
His habit of appreciativeness is seen, on the small scale, even in
such a matter as his appropriation and use of pithy phrases and
anecdotes picked up miscellaneously. “‘Pray, Mr. Opie, may I ask
what you mix your colours with?’ said a brisk dilettante student to
the great painter. ‘With brains, sir,’ was the gruff reply.” Having met
this story in some Life of the painter Opie, Dr. John Brown had
fastened on it, or it had adhered to him; and not only did he hang
one whole paper on it, entitled With Brains, Sir, but he made it do
duty again and again in other papers. At times when Dr. Chalmers
happened to be talked to about some person not already known to
him, and was told that the person was a man of ability, “Yes, but has
he wecht, Sir, has he wecht?” was his common question in reply;
and, as Dr. John Brown had also perceived that it is not mere
cleverness that is effective in the world, and that weight is the main
thing, he was never tired of bringing in Dr. Chalmers’s phrase to
enforce that meaning. When Dr. John wanted to praise anything of
the literary kind as being of the most robust intellectual quality, not
food for babes but very “strong meat” indeed, he would say “This is
lions’ marrow.” As he was not a man to conceal his obligations, even
for a phrase, we learn from him incidentally that he had taken the
metaphor originally from this passage in one of the pieces of the
English poet Prior:—
“That great Achilles might employ
The strength designed to ruin Troy,
He dined on lions’ marrow, spread
On toasts of ammunition bread.”

Dr. John had a repertory of such individual phrases and aphorisms,

picked up from books or conversation, which he liked to use as
flavouring particles for his own text. He dealt largely also in extracts
and quotations of greater length. Any bit that struck him as fine in a
new book of verses, any scrap of old Scottish ballad not generally
known, any interesting little poem by a friend of his own that he had
seen in manuscript, or any similar thing communicated to him as not
having seen the light before, was apt to be pounced upon, stamped
with his imprimatur, and turned into service in his own papers, as
motto, relevant illustration, or pleasant addition. His fondness for
quotation from his favourite prose authors has already been
mentioned. In fact, some of his papers are little more than patches of
quotations connected by admiring comments. In such cases it is as if
he said to his readers, “How nice this is, how capital! don’t you agree
with me?” Sometimes you may not quite agree with him, or you may
wish that he had thrown fewer quotations at you, and had said more
on the subject out of his own head; but you always recognise his
appreciativeness.
On the larger scale of the papers themselves the same
appreciativeness is discernible. Take first the papers which are most
in the nature of criticisms. Such are those entitled Henry Vaughan,
Arthur H. Hallam, Thackeray’s Death, Notes on Art, John Leech,
Halle’s Recital, and Sir Henry Raeburn. Whether in the literary
papers of this group, or in the art papers, you can see how readily
and strongly Dr. John Brown could admire, and what a propagandist
he was of his admirations. If Henry Vaughan the Silurist, the quaint
and thoughtful English poet of the seventeenth century, is now a
better known figure in English literary history than he was a
generation ago, it is owing, I believe, in some measure, to Dr. John
Brown’s resuscitation of him. So, when Tennyson’s In Memoriam
appeared in 1850, and all the world was moved by that extraordinary
poem, who but Dr. John Brown could not rest till he had ascertained
all that was possible about young Arthur Hallam, by obtaining a copy
of his “Remains in Verse and Prose,” privately printed in 1834, with a
memoir by the author’s father, Hallam the historian, and till he had
been permitted to give to the public, in liberal extracts from the
memoir, and by quotation from the pieces themselves, such an
authentic account of Tennyson’s dead friend as all were desiring?
The paper called Thackeray’s Death, though the only paper on
Thackeray now to be found among Dr. John Brown’s collected
writings, is by no means, I believe, the only paper he wrote on
Thackeray. If there was a Thackeray-worshipper within the British
Islands, it was Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh. Thackeray was his
greatest man by far, after Scott, or hardly after Scott, among our
British novelists,—his idol, almost his demigod; he had signified this,
if I mistake not, in an article on Thackeray while Thackeray’s fame
was still only in the making; and the particular paper now left us is
but a re-expression of this high regard for Thackeray as an author,
blended with reminiscences of his own meetings with Thackeray in
Edinburgh, and testimonies of his warm affection for the man.
Another of his chief admirations was Ruskin. I can remember how,
when the first volume of the Modern Painters appeared, the rumour
of it ran at once through Edinburgh, causing a most unusual stir of
interest in the new book, and in the extraordinary “Oxford Graduate”
who was its author; and I am pretty sure now that it was Dr. John
Brown that had first imported the book among us, and had
enlightened Dr. Chalmers and others as to its merits. There is no
article on Ruskin among the collected papers; but there are frequent
references to him, and his influence can be discerned in all the Art-
criticisms. These Art-criticisms of Dr. John Brown, however, are
hardly criticisms in the ordinary sense. No canons of Art are
expounded or applied in them. All that the critic does is to stand, as
it were, before the particular picture he is criticising,—a Wilkie, a
Raeburn, a Turner, a Landseer, a Delaroche, a Holman Hunt, or, as it
might happen, some new performance by one of his Edinburgh
artist-friends, Duncan, Sir George Harvey, or Sir Noel Paton,—
exclaiming “How good this is, how true, how powerful, how
pathetic!” while he attends to the direct human interest of the
subject, interprets the story of the picture in his own way, and throws
in kindly anecdotes about the painter. It is the same, mutatis
mutandis, for music, in his notices of pieces by Beethoven and
others, as heard at Halle’s concerts. His most elaborate paper of Art-
criticism is that entitled John Leech. It is throughout a glowing
eulogium on the celebrated caricaturist, with notices of some of his
best cartoons, but passing into an affectionate memoir of the man,
on his own account and as the friend of Thackeray, and indeed
incorporating reminiscences of Leech and Thackeray that had been
supplied him by a friend of both as material for a projected Memoir
of Leech on a larger scale. If not in this particular paper, at least here
and there in some of the others, the query may suggest itself whether
the laudation is not excessive. One asks sometimes whether the good
Dr. John was not carried away by the amiable fault of supposing that
what happens to be present before one of a decidedly likeable kind at
any moment, especially if it be recommended by private friendship,
must be the very nonsuch of its kind in the whole world. Another
query forced on one is whether there did not sometimes lurk under
Dr. John’s superlative admiration of a chief favourite in any walk an
antipathy to some other in the same walk. It is told of Sir Philip
Francis, the reputed author of Junius, that, when he was an old man,
he gave this counsel to a promising young member of the House of
Commons whom he had heard deliver a speech distinguished by the
generosity of its praises of some of his fellow-members,—“Young
man, take my advice; never praise anybody unless it be in odium
tertii,” i.e. “unless it be to the discredit of some third party.” No man
ever acted less in the spirit of this detestable, this truly diabolic,
advice than Dr. John Brown; and one’s question rather is whether he
did not actually reverse it by never attacking or finding fault with any
one unless it were in laudem tertii, to the increased credit of some
third party. Whether he was so actuated, consciously or
unconsciously, in his declaration of irreconcilable dislike to Maclise,
and his exceptionally severe treatment of that artist, I will not
venture to say; but I can find no other sufficient explanation of his
habitual depreciation of Dickens. His antipathy to Dickens, his
resentment of any attempted comparison between Dickens and
Thackeray, was proverbial among his friends, and amounted almost
to a monomania.
While, as will have been seen, Dr. John was by no means
insensible to impressions from anything excellent coming from
besouth the Tweed, it was naturally in his own Scotland, and among
the things and persons immediately round about him there, that his
faculty of appreciation revelled most constantly. With the majority of
his literary fellow-countrymen that have attained popularity in
Scotland during the last fifty years, he derived many of his literary
instincts from the immense influence of “Scotticism” which had been
infused into the preceding generation, and is seen, in his choice of
themes, following reverently in the wake of the great Sir Walter. He
reminds one somewhat of Aytoun in this respect, though with a
marked Presbyterian difference. Most of his papers are on Scottish
subjects; and in some of them, such as his Queen Mary’s Child-
Garden, his Minchmoor, the paper called The Enterkin, that entitled
A Jacobite Family, and that entitled Biggar and the House of
Fleming, we have descriptions of Scottish scenes and places very
much in the spirit of Sir Walter, though by no means slavishly so,
with notes of their historical associations, and recovery of local
legends, romances, and humours. In a more original vein, though
also principally Scottish, are those papers which may be described as
memoirs and character-sketches in a more express sense than the
three or four already referred to as combining memoir with criticism.
By far the most important of these is his Memoir of his own Father,
in supplement to the Life of his Father by the Rev. Dr. John Cairns,
and published under the too vague title of Letter to John Cairns,
D.D. It is a really beautiful piece of writing, not only full of filial
affection, and painting for us his father’s life and character with vivid
fidelity, but also interesting for its reminiscences of the author’s own
early years, and its sketches of several eminent ministers of the
Scottish Secession communion whom he had known as friends of his
father. The paper entitled Dr. Chalmers, though not particularly
good, attests the strength of the impression made by that great man
on Dr. John Brown, as on every one else that knew Dr. Chalmers.
Better, and indeed fine, though slight, are Edward Forbes, Dr.
George Wilson, The Duke of Athole, Struan, and Miss Stirling
Graham of Duntrune. On the whole, however, the most
characteristic papers of the Memoir class are those of Medical
Biography, including Locke and Sydenham, Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr.
Henry Marshall and Military Hygiene, Our Gideon Grays, Dr.
Andrew Brown and Sydenham, Dr. Adams of Banchory, Dr. John
Scott and His Son, Mr. Syme, and Sir Robert Christison. Sydenham
was Dr. John Brown’s ideal of a physician, and his account of that
English physician and of his place in the history of medicine is of
much value. The medical profession is indebted to him also for his
warm-hearted vindication of those whom he calls, after Scott, “Our
Gideon Grays,”—the hard-working and often poorly paid medical
practitioners of our Scottish country villages and parishes,—and for
the justice he has done to such a scholarly representative of that class
as the late Dr. Adams of Banchory, and to such recent medical
reformers as Dr. Andrew Combe and Dr. Henry Marshall. Especially
interesting to us here ought to be the obituary sketches of Syme and
Christison, so recently the ornaments of the Medical School of
Edinburgh University. He threw his whole heart into his sketch of
Syme, his admiration of whom, dating from the days when he had
been Syme’s pupil and apprentice in surgery, had been increased by
life-long intimacy. I may therefore dwell a little on this sketch, the
rather because it reminds me of perhaps the only occasion on which I
was for some hours in the society of Syme and Dr. John Brown
together.
In the autumn of 1868, Carlyle, then Lord Rector of our
University, and in the seventy-third year of his age, was persuaded,
on account of some little ailment of his, to come to Edinburgh and
put himself under the care of Professor Syme for surgical treatment.
Syme, proud of such a patient, and resolved that he should have his
best skill, would hear of no other arrangement than that Carlyle
should be his guest for the necessary time. For a fortnight or more,
accordingly, Carlyle resided with Syme in his beautiful house of
Millbank in the southern suburb of our city. Pains were taken to
prevent the fact from becoming known, that Carlyle might not be
troubled by visitors. But one day, when Carlyle was convalescent,
there was a quiet little dinner party at Millbank to meet him. Besides
Syme and Carlyle, and one or two of the members of Syme’s family,
there were present only Dr. John Carlyle, Dr. John Brown, and
myself. It was very pleasant, at the dinner table, to observe the
attention paid by the manly, energetic, and generally peremptory and
pugnacious, little surgeon to his important guest, his satisfaction in
having him there, and his half-amused, half-wondering glances at
him as a being of another genus than his own, but whom he had
found as lovable in private as he was publicly tremendous. There was
no “tossing and goring of several persons” by Carlyle, in that dining-
room at all events, but only genial and cheerful talk about this and
that. After dinner, we five went upstairs to a smaller room, where the
talk was continued, still more miscellaneously, Syme and Carlyle
having most of it. That very day there had been sent to Carlyle, by his
old friend David Laing, a copy of the new edition which Laing had
just privately printed of the rare Gude and Godly Ballates by the
brothers Wedderburn, originally published in 1578; and Carlyle,
taking up the volume from the table, would dip into it here and there,
and read some passages aloud for his own amusement and ours. One
piece of fourteen stanzas he read entire, with much gusto, and with
excellent chaunt and pronunciation of the old Scotch. Here are three
of the stanzas:—
“Thocht thow be Paip or Cardinall,
Sa heich in thy Pontificall,
Resist thow God that creat all,
Than downe thou sall cum, downe.

“Thocht thow be Archebischop or Deane,

Chantour, Chanslar, or Chaplane,
Resist thow God, thy gloir is gane,
And downe thow sall cum, downe.

“Thocht thow flow in Philosophie,

Or graduate in Theologie,
 Yit, and thow fyle the veritie,
Than downe thow sall cum, downe.”

Most pleasant of all it was when, later in the evening, we moved to

the low trellised verandah on the south side of the house, opening on
the beautiful garden of flowers and evergreens in which Syme took
such delight. It was a fine, still evening; and, as the talk went on in
the open air, with the garden stretching in front of us and the views
of the hills beyond, only with the accompaniment now of wreaths of
tobacco-smoke, Syme, who disliked tobacco, was smilingly tolerant
even of that accompaniment, in honour of the chief smoker.
For more than twelve years after that evening, which I
remember now like a dream, Carlyle was still in the land of the living,
advancing from his seventy-third year to his eighty-sixth; but hardly
a year of the twelve had elapsed when the great surgeon who had
entertained him, and who was so much his junior, was struck by the
paralysis which carried him off. It is from Dr. John Brown that we
have this touching record of Syme’s last days:—
“I was the first to see him when struck down by hemiplegia. It was in
Shandwick Place, where he had his chambers,—sleeping and enjoying his evenings
in his beautiful Millbank, with its flowers, its matchless orchids and heaths and
azaleas, its bananas and grapes and peaches: with Blackford Hill,—where Marmion
saw the Scottish host mustering for Flodden,—in front, and the Pentlands, with
Cairketton Hill, their advanced guard, cutting the sky, its ruddy porphyry scaur
holding the slanting shadows in its bosom. He was, as before said, in his room in
Shandwick Place, sitting in his chair, having been set up by his faithful Blackbell.
His face was distorted. He said—‘John, this is the conclusion’; and so it was, to his,
and our, and the world’s sad cost. He submitted to his fate with manly fortitude,
but he felt it to the uttermost,—struck down in his prime, full of rich power, abler
than ever to do good to men, his soul surviving his brain, and looking on at its
steady ruin during many sad months. He became softer, gentler,—more easily
moved, even to tears; but the judging power, the perspicacity, the piercing to the
core, remained untouched. Henceforward, of course, life was maimed. How he
bore up against this, resigning his delights of teaching, of doing good to men, of
seeing and cherishing his students, of living in the front of the world,—how he
accepted all this only those nearest him can know. I have never seen anything more
pathetic than when, near his death, he lay speechless, but full of feeling and mind,
and made known in some inscrutable way to his old gardener and friend that he
wished to see a certain orchid which he knew should be then in bloom. The big,
clumsy, knowing Paterson, glum and victorious (he was for ever getting prizes at
the Horticultural), brought it,—the Stanhopea Tigrina,—in without a word. It was
the very one,—radiant in beauty, white, with a brown freckle, like Imogen’s mole,
and, like it, ‘right proud of that most delicate lodging.’ He gazed at it, and, bursting
into a passion of tears, motioned it away as insufferable.”
To have been such a chronicler of the excellent as Dr. John
Brown was required more than endowment, however extraordinary,
in any mere passive quality of appreciativeness. It required the poetic
eye, the imaginative faculty in its active form, the power of infusing
himself into his subject, the discernment and subtlety of a real artist.
Visible to some extent in his criticisms of books and pictures, and
also in his memoirs and character-sketches, and in a still higher
degree in those papers of local Scottish description, legend, and
reminiscence to which I have already referred,—Queen Mary’s Child
Garden, Minchmoor, The Enterkin, A Jacobite Family, and Biggar
and the House of Fleming,—this rising of sympathetic appreciation
into poetic art and phantasy appears most conspicuously of all in
those papers or parts of papers in which the matter is whimsical or
out of the common track. Perhaps it is his affection for out-of-the-
way subjects, evident even in the titles of some of his papers, that has
led to the comparison of Dr. John Brown with Charles Lamb. Like
that English humourist, he did go into odd corners for his themes,—
still, however, keeping within Scottish ground, and finding his
oddities, whether of humour or of pathos, in native Scottish life and
tradition. Or rather, by his very appreciativeness, he was a kind of
magnet to which stray and hitherto unpublished curiosities, whether
humorous or pathetic, floating in Scottish society, attached
themselves naturally, as if seeking an editor. In addition to the
illustrations of this furnished by the already-mentioned papers of
Scottish legend, or by parts of them, one may mention now his paper
entitled The Black Dwarf’s Bones, that entitled Mystifications, his
Marjorie Fleming or Pet Marjorie, his Jeems the Doorkeeper, and
the quaint little trifle entitled Oh! I’m wat, wat. In the first three of
these Dr. John Brown is seen distinctly as the editor of previously
unpublished curiosities. There were relics of information respecting
that strange being, David Ritchie, the deformed misanthropist of
Peeblesshire, who had been the original of one of Scott’s shorter
novels. These came to Dr. John Brown, and he strung them together,
extracts and quotations, on a thread of connecting narrative. Again,
having had the privilege of knowing intimately that venerable Miss
Stirling Graham of Duntrune who is the subject of one of his
memorial sketches, and who used to reside in Edinburgh every
winter till within a few years of her death in 1877 at the age of ninety-
five, who but Dr. John Brown first persuaded the venerable lady to
give to the world her recollections of her marvellous dramatic feats in
her earlier days, when she used to mystify Scott, and Jeffrey, and
Lord Gillies, and John Clerk of Eldin, and Count Flahault, and whole
companies of their contemporaries in Edinburgh drawing-rooms, by
her disguised appearances in the dress and character of an eccentric
old Scottish gentlewoman; and who but Dr. John immortalised the
tradition by telling her story over again, and re-imagining for us the
whole of that Edinburgh society of 1820–21 in which Miss Stirling
Graham had moved so bewitchingly? Ten years before that, or in
December 1811, there had died in Edinburgh a little girl of a family
with whom Scott was particularly intimate, and who lived near him.
She was but in her ninth year; but for several years she had been the
pet and wonder of her friends, for her childish humours and abilities,
her knowledge of books and poetry, the signs of a quaint genius in
her behaviour, and in her own little exercises in prose and in verse.
Many a heart was sore, Scott’s for one, we are told, when poor little
“Pet Marjorie” died; and no one that knew her ever forgot her. One
sister of hers, who survived her for seventy years, cherished her
memory to the last like a religion, and had preserved all her childish
and queerly spelt letters and journals, with other scraps of writing,
tied up with a lock of her light-brown hair. To these faded letters and
papers Dr. John Brown had access; and the result was his exquisitely
tender Pet Marjorie or Marjorie Fleming,—the gem in its kind
among all his papers, and perhaps the most touching illustration in
our language of Shakespeare’s text, “How quick bright things come to
confusion!” Here, as in some other cases, it may be said that Dr.
John Brown only edited material that came ready to his hand. Even
in that view of the matter, one could at least wish that there were
more such editing; but it is an insufficient view. He had recovered
the long-dead little Marjorie Fleming for himself; and the paper,
though consisting largely of quotations and extracts, is as properly
his own as any of the rest. But, should there be a disposition still with
some to distinguish between editing and invention, and to regard
Mystifications and Marjorie Fleming as merely well-edited
curiosities of a fascinating kind, no such distinction will trouble one
who passes to Jeems the Doorkeeper. A real person, as the writer
tells us, sat for that sketch too, and we have a portrait of the actual
Jeems who officiated as his father’s beadle in Broughton Place
Church; but with what originality and friskiness of humour is the
portrait drawn, and how fantastically the paper breaks in the end
into streaks of a skyward sermon! There is the same quaint
originality, or Lamb-like oddity of conglomerate, in the little
fragment called “Oh, I’m wat, wat,” and in one or two other trifles,
with similarly fantastic titles, which I have not named.
There is no better test of imaginative or poetic faculty in a man
than susceptibility to anything verging on the preternaturally solemn
or ghastly. Of the strength of this susceptibility in Dr. John Brown’s
nature there are evidences, here and there, in not a few of his
writings. Take for example the following reminiscence, in his paper
entitled Thackeray’s Death, of a walk with Thackeray in one of the
suburbs of Edinburgh:—
“We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December when he
was walking with two friends along the Dean Road, to the west of Edinburgh,—one
of the noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening,—such a sunset as one
never forgets: a rich dark bar of cloud hovered over the sun, going down behind the
Highland hills, lying bathed in amethystine bloom; between this cloud and the hills
there was a narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip colour, lucid, and as it
were the very body of heaven in its clearness; every object standing out as if etched
upon the sky. The north-west end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay
in the heart of this pure radiance; and there a wooden crane, used in the quarry
below, was so placed as to assume the figure of a cross: there it was, unmistakable,
lifted up against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he
gave utterance, in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what we all were feeling,
in the word ‘Calvary!’ The friends walked on in silence, and then turned to other
things.”
Even a more remarkable example is that furnished by the paper
entitled “In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision.” The paper purports to
be the record of a singular dream, dreamt by a man whom Dr. John
Brown counted among his friends, and of whose great abilities,
powers of jest and whimsical humour, and powers of a still higher
kind, there are yet recollections in the lawyer-world of Edinburgh,—
the late A. S. Logan, Sheriff of Forfarshire. I prefer here to tell the
dream in my own words, as it has remained in my memory since I
first heard it described many years ago. This I do because, while the
version of it I have so retained came to me originally from Dr. John
Brown himself, it seems to me better than the version subsequently
given by him in his own paper, attenuated as it is there by
explanations and comments, and by the insertion of a weak metrical
expansion of it by Logan himself.
The Dream may be entitled The Death of Judas, and was as
follows:—The dreamer seemed to be in a lonely, dreary landscape
somewhere, the nearer vicinity of which consisted of a low piece of
marshy ground, with dull, stagnant pools, overgrown with reeds. The
air was heavy and thick: not a sound of life, or sight of anything
indicating human presence or habitation, save that on the other side
of the marshy ground from the dreamer, and near the margin of the
pools and reeds, was what seemed to be a deserted wooden hut, the
door half-broken, and the side-timbers and rafters also ragged, so
that through the rifts there was a dim perception of the dark interior.
But lo! as the dreamer gazed, it appeared as if there were a motion of
something or other within the hut, signs of some living thing in it
moving uneasily and haggardly to and fro. Hardly has one taken
notice of this when one is aware of a new sight outside the hut,—a
beautiful dove, or dove-like bird, of spotless white, that has somehow
stationed itself close to the door, and is brooding there, intent and
motionless, in a guardian-like attitude. For a while the ugly, ragged
hut, with the mysterious signs of motion inside of it, and this white
dove-like creature outside at its door, are the only things in the
marshy tract of ground that hold the eye. But, suddenly, what is this
third thing? Round from the gable of the hut it emerges slowly
towards the marshy front, another bird-like figure, but dark and
horrible-looking, with long and lean legs and neck, like a crane. Past
the hut it stalks and still forward, slowly and with loathsome gait, its
long neck undulating as it moves, till it has reached the pools and
their beds of reeds. There, standing for a moment, it dips down its
head among the reeds into the ooze of one of the pools; and, when it
raises its head again, there is seen wriggling in its mouth something
like a small, black, slimy snake, or worm. With this in its mouth, it
stalks slowly back, making straight for the white dove that is still
brooding at the door of the hut. When it has reached the door, there
seems to be a struggle of life and death between the two creatures,—
the obscene, hideous, crane-like bird, and the pure, white innocent,—
till, at last, by force, the dove is compelled to open its throat, into
which its enemy drops the worm or snake. Immediately the dove
drops dead; and at that same instant the mysterious motion within
the hut increases and becomes more violent,—no mere motion now,