teaching fairy tales in a new way.doc

teaching fairy tales in a new way If you go to and search lessons with the subject faery tales you will find some great, innovative ideas.We do fractured fairy tales with our 8th grade. The ELA classes come to the library and we talk about the history of fairy tales and the common elements of the stories (magic, beauty=goodness, ugly=evil, threes, oral tradition, etc.). We talk about Bowlderizing and the Disnification of the stories. Then I read them Grimms version of Rumplestiltskin and a fractured version (from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle Show). We talk about the differences and similarities. That night for homework, the kids are assigned other Grimms fairy tales to read (we have about 5 or 6 they can pick from) and the next day in class they jigsaw and share the stories.Again, we analyze the stories and talk about what surprised them. Usually thats the bloodiness and violence and how the whole darn thing doesnt make much logical sense. The assignment is to write their own fractured fairy tale. This forces them to focus on one literary element and change it, and of course, when you change that one thing - the whole story changes.Weve had kids modernize stories (always lots of fun), change the sex of one of the characters, or have their story begin the day after happily ever after We do this in 8th grade, because they can really see the big picture and can really follow up on the fractured element.If you want the unit plan, let me know.Not sure if this would work for your kiddos but I always introduced the elements of fairy/folk tales by putting on a chefs hat, grabbing a mixing bowl and spoon and talking about the ingredients of each of those genre (i.e. for fairy tales-elements of three, etc.) I used a version from Grimm and a modern version (we referred to as Disney) and we did comparison and contrasting essays. They were wonderful and my 5th graders ate up the project. I gave them venn diagrams to set up their writing. Many noticed that Disney does not always follow the 3 convention that Grimm uses every time.I am collaborating with a ninth grade English teacher on a fairy tale myth and legend unit. We are reading different versions of the same tales and discussing how culture influences the tale and how each culture adapts the tale as their own. We are also talking about how women are subservient in the tales. Their final project is to take one of the tales and adapt it by either changing point of view or location.I taught a small unit last year (while I was still a student) to our 5th graders using fairy tales. I used fractured fairy tales, did the usual comparison to originals, but mostly talked about the different points of view the twists had. Then I had them choose a fairy tale and re-write it from another point of view. At the end, they took their new stories to kindergarten (who had recently finished a fairy tale unit) and read their stories to them. But I liked using them for point of view.Fairy tales could also be used for summary. Compare it to texting and they have to pretend they are texting the gist of the tale.Hi. How about comparing the new versions of fairy tales (Somebody and the three Blairs, Ruby, Jim and the beanstalk, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Boy (Egielski), Sleeping Ugly, The Irish Cinderlad, The Egyptian Cinderella, The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, etc.) with the traditional. There are dozens more to compare-old vs. new. Im doing fairy tales all this year-one a week-to the Elementary classes.I am teaming with the art teacher. I bring in a variety of book versions of each fairy tale. We talk about how the different artists and writers approached their version of the fairy tale and then choose one version of the fairy tale to read to the group. After the story, we do an art project prepared by the art teacher. I follow up the story time often by bringing in an AR fairy tale reader of that weeks story and read that book with students one on one during their library visit. Im really enjoying this fairy tale year and wish I had done it earlier. Next year we are planning to team teach folktales continent by continent.Our old 7th gr. literature texts contained traditional fairy tales as well as a fractured one called Young Ladies Dont Slay Dragons (sorry, author escapes me). Kids read conventionals from text and library first, generated a list of things they had in common; then read fractur