7 Ways to Use Fairy Tales in the Classroom

Who loves a good fairy tale? I know I do and I also know that my students love them, too. There are plenty to choose from, multiple versions of them, and so many great learning opportunities wrapped up in one. So, besides simply reading and responding, what else can we use fairy tales for? Read on to see topics you could address with a simple fairy tale.

1. KEY DETAILS
As with any text, fairy tales can easily be used to work on finding key details. Aren't the characters, setting, and plot in a fairy tale a lot more engaging than most other stories? Students are still practicing the skill, but are enjoying the story simultaneously. I like using graphic organizers for students to practice writing down key details in the story. I also like taking a commonly known fairy tale and shortening it (or finding an already shortened version - check out KidsGen for some shorter versions that you could read aloud, print, or adapt even further - they also include videos). Once I have a shortened version, we can then practice our close reading and answer questions for students to go back into the text to find. You know, the usual! ;) The Fairy Tale Unit on Teachers Pay Teachers includes close reads as well as graphic organizers and you can get a sample of the graphic organizers for free below.

This free pack of graphic organizers will help you get started on key details with your students. Click the image to grab it.

2. STORY ELEMENTS
Fairy tales are a little unique in that they have a few other elements that set them apart from other fiction. Yes, we have characters, setting, problem, and solution, but we also sometimes have "magic," and always a "happily ever after." Adding in those extra elements makes learning all of them that much more special. Hang posters throughout the room with these fairy tale elements. They will help us remember them through the recall questions, but once students are beyond that, they can use these story elements to answer higher order questions as well as create their own. The posters below are FREE on Teachers Pay Teachers. Click HERE or the image below to get your set and hang them up, ready to go in your classroom.

How to Use These Posters:
- hang them up and use them for student reference
- read aloud parts of the story and ask students which story element it belongs with. You could also provide written cards and students can sort them as a learning center/station.
- hang them up or attach them to a binder ring to place within a writing center for students to use while writing their own fairy tale (more on that later).

Paired with this fun graphic organizer, students can analyze and break down fairy tales they are reading or they can use it to write their own (again, more on that later).

3. COMPARE AND CONTRAST
We know that fairy tales have a lot in common, so let's compare! Using a simple venn diagram will have students using those fairy tale story elements we already learned about and thinking about what these stories have in common and what sets them apart.

4. RETELLING/SUMMARIZING
We all know the kid(s) who summarize by telling you the WHOLE story without leaving out any detail, right? I can't be the only one that has seen that! Summarizing is a skill we use throughout our entire lives and we practice it starting in Kindergarten! Fairy Tales are amazing stories to use to practice this skill. There are opportunities for puppet shows for your younger grades and, what I like to call, The Ultimate Retelling Challenge for your upper grades. Students retell a story either by writing it or acting it out. Read about it on this excerpt from The Fairy Tale Unit on TpT:

Here's a couple of my lovely theater students using puppets to retell a fairy tale.

5. READER'S THEATER
I. Love. Reader's theater. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Fairy tales are exceptional stories to use for reader's theater because there are so many different ones, they are easily modified for any reading level, and students love them. Not only that, but Disney has helped a lot in this area, too. Odds are, most of your students have seen or at least heard of the Disney movie of Cinderella or Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, so even if they aren't great at acting out a part, they have a character they've actually SEEN to refer to. The Fairy Tale Unit on TpT has 5 reader's theater scenes as well as 5 reader's theater monologues at varying levels of reading difficulty. This is also a fun time to add in costumes (again... sucker for theater...).

Here are some of my students watching another student perform a monologue. Gotta love those costumes!

6. CREATIVE WRITING
Now that students know the key details of their favorite fairy tales and they know what makes a fairy tale, it is SO exciting to have students write their own. By exposing students to multiple fairy tales, they'll have an idea of varying characters and different problems and solutions. I've had some students come up with every detail brand new, but I have also had students that combined their favorite parts of various fairy tales to make a brand new mashup of sorts. Both are awesome and both are showing the creative side of your students while using this new found style in story telling. Below is a game I call "Roll a Fairy Tale." Students roll the dice and develop their story that way. There's never the "I don't know what to write," issue with this game and it is a fun addition to any writing center. They just choose a sheet (character, beginning, middle, end, finish the story, or how did this happen?), roll a die, and basically fill in the blanks. This is included in The Fairy Tale Unit on TpT.

7. CREATIVE APPLICATION
We just used our fairy tale knowledge to write our own, but there are so many other opportunities for students to be creative with fairy tales. Here's a bullet list of just some of these opportunities:

- For younger students, dress up in costumes for retelling purposes or have them create their own crown.

- For older students, play the Creative Castle Card Game where they write about or draw a castle with combinations of various fairy tales.

- For any grade level, have students discuss, write, or act out "What If..." questions, such as "What if Cinderella didn't make it back before midnight?" There are many of these included in the Fairy Tale Unit on TpT.

- Read fractured fairy tales, such as The Stinky Cheese Man and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and have students write their own taking a fairy tale and twisting it around. This is GREAT for teaching point of view!

Here are some GREAT fractured fairy tales to go with your unit. I absolutely LOVE The Stinky Cheese Man.

- For older students, have them write and perform their own fairy tale reader's theater or have them write a skit to have others perform. This is also really fun for those fractured fairy tales. I had a student write a monologue from the point of view of "Awake Beauty," a princess who was given the curse of never being able to fall asleep. LOVE kids' creativity!


For everything you see in this post and MORE, check out The Fairy Tale Unit in my TpT shop! And definitely make sure you snag those free posters and free graphic organizers to use with all these other fun ideas for using fairy tales.

Meet the Teacher!

I am a blog JUNKIE. I follow and read so many blogs and it's a daily ritual now to get online and follow/stalk all my favorite teacher bloggers! Right now, the internet is blowing up with so many wonderful ideas and new people to follow that I am incredibly overwhelmed! That's why I am so glad to have found the Meet the Teacher Linky over at Falling Into First. So many times I read and pin but I never take a second to read about the blogger and find out more about them! That's part of it, guys! Blogging is more than just grabbing ideas and sharing your own. It's about meeting people and making teaching buddies!

So, without much further ado... Welcome to Daisy Designs! I am Amanda (not Daisy... more on that later)!

I am a first year Kindergarten teacher and a theater instructor for all ages at a community theater! I am originally from Nevada but currently live in HOT central Florida.

I married this goofball a whopping ONE year ago (anniversary post HERE) and he and I make a super silly team. His name is Ryan and he's my wonderful baldy best friend. He has his own YouTube channel (mostly about video games and leadership skills) that you should check out! He's kind of a big deal. And I may or may not be featured in a few of the videos... <3 Here's the link: BrutallStatic

We do not currently have children (one day!) but these are our precious fur babies! LOOK AT THIS CUTENESS. I can barely contain myself!!! The sweetie on the right is Daisy! That's right, Daisy as in Daisy Designs! She's my name inspiration and a sweet snuggly (and sometimes extremely loud) 4 pound chihuahua! The other baby is Pudgy. She's also a chihuahua... except much larger... hence the name. She is the snuggliest dog I have ever had! Doesn't this picture just make you wanna squeeze 'em?!

As mentioned before, I am a theater instructor as well as a Kindergarten teacher. I have taught at a community theater for about 6 years now and originally my degree was in Theater! I hated the lifestyle and truly stopped enjoying performing, which broke my heart. So, I changed majors and couldn't be happier! I haven't been in a show in a few years, but choreograph many children's productions. The two pictures above are from a couple of shows I have been in. On the left, I'm front and center as Tiger Lily in Peter Pan and on the right I am Minnie Fay in Hello Dolly! That dress and makeup on the right sure made me look like a baby, huh?

Alright, now for the fun stuff!

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

Plastic cups with straws (just like Stephanie at Falling Into First!), Netflix (specifically binge watching Netflix), Civilization V for PC (with all of the expansions of course), rollercoasters, the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, and cheesecake.

IF YOU WEREN'T A TEACHER, WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO BE?

I would love to be a graphic designer. I'm not great, but what I have dabbled in I am fascinated by and love the opportunity to be creative. I've toyed around with taking some courses or at the very least teaching myself more on the topic. 

THREE LITTLE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE YOU:

Creative. Silly. Driven.

FINISH THE SENTENCE, "___, SAID NO TEACHER EVER!!"

It's okay, I have PLENTY of dry erase markers.

IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY AND YOU CAN INVITE ANYONE (DEAD OR ALIVE) TO THE PARTY. WHO ARE YOU INVITING?

Sam Heughan. Diana Gabaldon.

IF SOMEONE WROTE A BOOK ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WHAT WOULD BE THE TITLE?

The Hair That Cannot Be Contained

YOU GET TO PICK ONE SUPERPOWER. WHAT IS IT?

Time travel, without doubt! How amazing would that be? Seriously!

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE OR SAYING?

The classic: "If at first you don't succeed, try try again."

IF YOU HAD TO SING ONE SONG ON AMERICAN IDOL, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Candy by Mandy Moore. Don't you laugh at me. I'm a 90s kid.

ARE YOU A MORNING PERSON OR A NIGHT OWL?

I was always a night owl until this past year. I am apparently pretty good at changing my preferences because ever since I started waking up early for school, I've been great at mornings! (Not every morning, mind you... but I'm getting there).

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE RESOURCE YOU'VE CREATED IN YOUR TPT SHOP?

I LOVE my Fairy Tale Unit. It was created for a camp I taught and I tweaked it to make it work perfectly for a general classroom setting. I had so much fun creating and implementing the activities in it and I love looking at it (I said, don't make fun of me!).

So much pretty.

SHARE SOMETHING WE MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT YOU!

I love computer games! I may have mentioned it before in a blog post long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away... but I am a nerd. Surprise! Right now I'm playing a lot of Civ V but I have also been known to play a lot of League of Legends and World of Warcraft. 

So, there ya have it! Head on over to Falling Into First to read about Stephanie and to meet some other amazing bloggers! Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to follow me on Google+ or BlogLovin!

It's Time For a MANIC MONDAY!

I just realized that it has been MONTHS since I have linked up with Charity over at Classroom Freebies! WHAT?! I've even had a new freebie up at my store for like 3 weeks now and never linked up!

If you haven't heard of Classroom Freebies, you will super excited you stopped by my blog today. Everything is freeeeeeee! Weeeee! And every Monday, there is a link-up of some wonderful teachers who create and share their new resources at no cost to you. It is an awesome place to discover new resources and ideas and to snag yourself a few free downloads. I have discovered tons of blogs that I have since followed that link up there, so be sure to check out the other linkups!

This freebie has been on my store for a few weeks now. I created it for the Fairy Tale Theater Styles camp I taught (more on that HERE). These posters were hung up around the room for students to refer to when they were writing their scripts for a play writing activity.

Included:
Once Upon a Time
Characters
Setting
Problem
Solution
Magic
Happily Ever After

There are three styles of each poster: Color and Cursive, B&W and Cursive, and B&W and print.

And they are free! They will certainly add some pretty decoration for your room during your fairy tale units and are super useful. Click any of the images above to get the download and enjoy!!!

Fairy Tale Endings

On Friday of last week, we ended the first of many one week summer camps at the theater I work for. This camp was called "Fairy Tale Theater Styles" and it was for ages 8-12. I was IN LOVE with this class. It was a total blast and I'm using it as the inspiration of my newest TpT product!

The summer camps at the theater are three hours a day for one week. Parents can sign their kids up for one camp or enough camps to last all summer! They are broken down into age groups (ages 4-7, ages 8-12, and the teen camps). I love how the camps work and they all have awesome themes that make learning theater skills even more fun!

Like I said, this one was a fairy tale theme and I had nine very excited little girls. Here's a breakdown of what we did, most of which is included in the download on TpT:

On Day One, we did a lot of ice breaker games that I have in my back pocket. I only knew one of the students in the class from a class I taught last year, but I didn't know anyone else! It was exciting to have new kids around!

Ice Breakers: The Adjective Game and the Skittles Game

The Adjective Game: Everyone stands in a circle and we go around in a circle introducing ourselves with an adjective starting with the same sound as our name before it. Example from the class: Jumpy Jenna. She was accurate.

The Skittles Game: Everyone gets three Skittles of different colors. I premade a little chart that had a corresponding topic next to each color. Red for family, yellow for hobbies, orange for favorite color, etc. You can do this with whatever you want! We went around in the circle and the kids told everyone a little about themselves based on the color candies they had. Added bonus: You get to eat Skittles!

I tried to start and end each camp day with a fairy tale reading. I started with Cinderella. The girls were happily nibbling on their Skittles while I read and were definitely excited for the next activity:

Here's how it works. I split the entire group into two groups. I did this because I had two volunteer teen interns (Derek and Lindsey), so we had Team Derek and Team Lindsey. They were uneven, but we made up for it later with different groups. You can totally do this with as many groups as you want, but it works best in groups of 4 or more.

The teams were given the task of retelling the story of Cinderella as a 5 minute play where everyone has a role. That was fine and dandy. THEN, after they all perform their short play, you give them the same task but the twist is.... They now only have one minute to retell the same story. If they do well with that, which my groups did, you can then challenge them to retell the story in 30 seconds. That is hilarious to watch!

The best part about this game is the fact that the students really have to think about what is important in the story to retell. Have you ever asked a child to tell you about the book they are reading and they want to tell you every detail? This eliminates that! Included in the Fairy Tale Unit on TpT is a writing activity similar to this that would supplement this activity.

After the retelling challenge, we played a few more games, one of which I call the "Stepmother's Chore Relay Race." I tried to make Day One all about Cinderella. ;)

In addition to the two games mentioned above, we did some work on character traits and why they are important to know as an actor. I rolled out some white butcher paper and gave them markers and them write in (yearbook style) the different character traits of Cinderella. We hung it up on the wall for us to refer to all week long.

And of course, being that this is a theater camp, we started learning some basic ballroom dancing steps to the song "Ten Minutes Ago" from the Broadway version of Cinderella. At first I was disappointed that I didn't have any boys in the class, it wound up being a huge benefit. The girls didn't mind being each other's partners and I didn't have to deal with "EWW! I am not dancing with a boy!!" Kids...

I was pretty excited to go back the next day and the kiddos were excited to see me, so I would say, that means Day One was a success! Day Two was awesome as well. We did puppet shows! The theater I work for has TONS of hand puppets and finger puppets. I had them in small groups again and I scattered the puppets around the room. They were instructed to each choose two puppets (they have two hands after all!) and create their own fairy tale. We discussed the elements of a fairy tale.





I used some posters that I made and hung them up on the wall for them to refer to as they figured out their puppet show. They came up with some pretty awesome fairy tales! You can snag the posters for FREE at my TpT store and they match everything else in the full unit (also on my TpT store). Click the image below to go to the FREEBIE!!



Day Two was so much fun and I tried to record their puppet shows, but I discovered that I had my phone on camera the whole time and instead of recording, I just took one picture. /facepalm. What a waste! But take my word for it (because you have no choice...) that they were great. I loved seeing the kids go up to the posters and jot down their ideas to rehearse. So awesome.

We also read The Princess and The Pea because they had never heard of it! WHAT?! They were certainly intrigued to hear a fairy tale they hadn't heard before and I was certainly thrilled to be the one to share it with them. After we read it, I showed them the first twenty minutes of the musical version of the story called Once Upon a Mattress. It was a theater camp, after all, and I love the fact that the musical changed some things about the original story. It made the kids really think about why those elements were changed in order to fit the style of entertainment. They did a great job and they enjoyed the movie. If you have not seen or heard the music in Once Upon a Mattress, look it up for sure! It is really enjoyable and the movie version is in parts on YouTube (with Zooey Deschanel, Matthew Morris, and the wonderful Carol Burnett!).

And what kind of theater class would this have been if we didn't SING something! We sang some songs from Tangled, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, and Pinocchio. Karaoke time!

I have to tell you that Day Three was probably the most fun day of them all. Seriously. We did some set designing.

I have tried set design ONCE with 8-year-olds. ONCE. Tried and definitely failed. It was a horrible flop and I vowed I would never try it again. Well... I broke my vow and tried my hand at it again for this camp. After a few years of avoiding it, I felt it was time to introduce it again... but in a more kid-friendly way. I made a game. And it rocked.

I call the game the "Creative Castle Game" and it works like this: There are three types of cards. Students draw a card from each type (The Fairy Tale Link card, The Castle Design card, and the Character card). Each card has some sort of design element on it that must be included in their drawing. This caused the students to really narrow down what their design needed to be, which is important in theater set design. You must meet the needs of the performance and the performers. I got out the rulers and the art supplies and let them go to town. Because of the wide age range, I did not require them to include measurements and scales, but with older students I would. It was also really awesome to hang up their designs around the room for a "Design Gallery" when parents came on the last day for "Share Day."

Here's an example that one of the students was working on. Her cards were:

1. Your castle is home to a giant in the sky. (Jack and the Beanstalk)

2. Your castle has a moat surrounding it. (design element)

3. Your princess has dark hair (character element)

All the cards and more pictures are included in the full unit HERE in my TpT store. In the download I also included ways the cards could be used as a writing assignment or writing center with a fairy tale twist. Included as well are rubrics for easy grading, an answer key for the Fairy Tale Link cards, and a "Colorful Words" page to help those students who are writing about their castle instead of drawing it.

I know that I JUST said that Day Three was the most awesome day... but Day Four was pretty killer, too. I also told you that the theater has a huge collection of puppets... something else they have a lot of... are costumes. I usually avoid the costume chests like the plague with larger classes, because the trunks were previously AWFUL to get out and organize. It was chaos! But our new Education Director tore everything apart a little while ago and organized everything beautifully. I was not afraid to use the costumes! And the kids were border-lined threatened that if they didn't keep it organized there would be severe consequences. So we played some great games with the costumes.

In one such game, the girls chose a random costume and put it on, I split them into groups, and they had to act out a fairy tale based on the random costumes they had on. Interesting, to say the least. They were very creative. And poor Derek. What a trooper. Those girls had him in all kinds of wacky get-ups. This picture of the tutu just cracks me up though.

We also discussed fractured fairy tales. There are a lot of plays and musicals that are written in a fractured fairy tale style and since this class was called "Fairy Tale Theater Styles" I thought it would be appropriate and super awesome to add that in. I read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka. I chose it because there are short silly versions of fairy tales so we could read a lot in our limited time after dress up time. Then, I challenged the girls to write their own fracture fairy tale monologues. They chose a costume and everything and wrote them diligently. I was SO impressed. The things they came up with were so great. I mean, look at these titles:

"The True Story of The Little Mermaid" (Ariel was a little feminist in this one demanding that Eric sacrifice his life and become a merman... why does SHE have to do it??)

"The Two Blind Mice and The Sister With 20/20 Vision" (Oh my word... and one of the brothers' names was Mickey. So FUNNY.)

"Awake Beauty" (She was cursed to stay awake instead of sleep and was forced to watch infomercials on TV all night long. It was also awesome that her costume was pink pajamas and she carried a pillow)

I can't make these things up, people. I am far less creative that these awesome kiddos!

SHARE DAY! HOORAY!

We practiced our things and played a few games, but today was all about the parents coming in for the last 45 minutes of camp and watching our performances. We set up the Castle Design Gallery, I printed and had the kids fold some programs and we got our costumes ready to present our monologues and dances. Here's how it went down:

"Ten Minutes Ago" ballroom dance from Cinderella

"Kiss the Girl" (singing) from The Little Mermaid

"I See the Light" (singing) from Tangled

Fractured Fairy Tale Monologues (all 9 original monologues!)

"I'm a Believer" dance from Shrek

All the dances were choreographed by yours truly and will be up on YouTube as soon as my husband edits it and makes it pretty. ;) I also wanted to put up the program but it has the students' full names. Sorry! They look cute though, don't worry!

More awesome costume pictures. One featuring Derek in the fabulous... something... the girls put him in. Gotta love it!

So there ya have it folks. This post was a long one but I felt that I needed to share my first AMAZING week at the theater camps. I can't wait for next week. Next week's camp is called "You Can't Stop the Beat" and it is a musical theater dance camp! Woo-HOO!!