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.

Five For Friday [March 28]

Is it strange that I can get a Five for Friday post this early?? I think so! But Spring Break makes wonderful things happen. ;P

First of all, this is my last day of Spring Break! I had huge plans to get a whole lot done, but it didn't really pan out. I still feel incredibly behind. My mistake was that I planned too much and didn't account for my need to actually take a break. I still have the weekend to get my act together and start on Monday fresh.

This is pretty much how I feel.

Although I didn't get as much done as I had originally hoped, I will say that I got to spend more time with my husband when he got home from work. If you've read some of my previous posts about him, he is a YouTuber and HUGE gamer. I had posted a couple of times about a few videos I am in on YouTube and I feel so flattered that I actually have a few fans! Hehe.

We have some exciting news! Ryan was contacted by a viewer of his YouTube channel and his Twitch stream and is making... wait for it.... shirts. They are making.... shirts! Brutall (his gaming internet personality) shirts! How crazy is that??

Here's the video. I'm in it!

And then I did another video! My series on his channel is about how to incorporate a time consuming hobby into a relationship. This one is about how its okay to branch out on your own and to not just do something together for the sake of doing something together. It makes more sense in the video, so check it out and subscribe to his channel for more.

FREEBIE ALERT BELOW

So even though I just got done saying that I didn't get much done this week, I did manage to get a new product finished! I seriously feel like I've been working on this things for MONTHS. It took much longer than expected but I'm happy with the results!

These are "Prop Stories" which I use a lot in my theater classes for the younger groups. Essentially I read, and the kids wait to hear their "name" and hold up a prop. It is AMAZING for listening skills. I mean, you could hear a pin drop while they wait for their part to come up. I had also created shorter versions for small groups which they of course love because one student reads and the others hold up their prop at the right time. They will re-read and re-read and re-read over and over again so they can all take turns at each part. It has been very successful for me so I hope you can say the same.

Here are some shots of the product and click HERE for a FREEBIE of it exclusive to my blog readers!!!

Click any of the images above to go to the full download or click HERE.

If you haven't heard, I have a linky going on! Next week is National Week of the Ocean so link up your Under the Sea posts and products. HERE's the link!

I LOVE Under the Sea stuff!

My product in the link is another Reader's Theater (so now you know my favorite things...).

One nice thing about being off the last week is I was able to cook lots of good recipes for my husband and myself. We are terrible about fast food, so it was nice to take a step back and make a few home cooked meals. We are trying to get back on track and I think we did a great job this week towards that.

Check out what we've eaten this week by clicking the links. The links direct you to some of my absolute FAVORITE recipe blogs!

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole by Laaloosh

Slow Cooker Turkey Sloppy Joes by Skinny Ms.

Crockpot Eggplant Parmesan by Stephanie O'Dea

National Ocean Week Linky!

Hello readers! I hope everyone is enjoying their Spring Break (or if you are like me, a BUSY CATCH-UP Spring Break...).

If you weren't aware, next week is National Ocean Week! I am a sucker for things under the sea themed. I love colorful fish and water and boats, oh gosh, I could go on and on! So, in anticipation of next week's fun, I've decided to host my VERY FIRST linky! I am super excited!

Here's the deal:
Link up your under the sea/ocean posts. They can be freebies. They can be classroom photos or ideas. They can be blog posts of your plans for next week. They can be links to your paid products on TpT. As long as they are Under the Sea or Ocean related, I'll take it. Let's inspire each other with great ideas for this upcoming week!

Here is my Under the Sea themed TpT creation for ya'll. Mine is a reader's theater with short scenes and skits that can be used for whole group fun or as reader's theater centers. I just love them!!! My original blog post about them can be found HERE and the download is HERE or just click the pictures below.

 

Thanks for linking up! Leave me some comments below and be sure to follow my blog so you can more easily access your linkup.

Scenes and Skits

Hello all!

As you know if you've kept up with my blog, I not only work in a Kindergarten classroom, but I have been a theater instructor for about 10 years now. I have taught at modeling and acting agencies in central Florida as well as various community theaters and dance studios. I LOVE this part of my life. I was always involved in theater at a young age. My mother worked as the Music Director at one of the biggest community theaters in the southeast so I basically grew up there! It has helped me come out of my once shy shell and gain confidence. It has also led me to my passion in education.

I currently work in the Education Department at the Ocala Civic Theater. Click their logo above to see what we are up to!

The downside to children's theater is when you have a class of a set number of children it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find scripts of scenes, skits, monologues, or entire plays to fit the class you have. Now if you are doing a play and you can audition children and pick kids from a pool of auditions, that's entirely different. More often than not, you have a set number of boys and girls ranging in age and skills.

I normally wind up writing my own material. I have a plethora of scripts ranging in length from half page monologues to six page skits. I also won a play writing competition in my Junior year of high school and still have that play laying around somewhere.

I recently taught a class called "Loud and Proud" all about vocal techniques, projection, diction, rate, and memorization of lines. I decided I wanted scenes... but they were ages 4 to 7, I had 9 of them, 6 girls, and 3 boys. I didn't even bother trying to find a script. Most of them couldn't read anyway...

I went with a gender neutral theme that is always popular with the kiddos: Under the Sea. I wrote 4 total scenes, but only wound up using 3.

Parents were asking me about the scripts and I told them that I wrote them. They loved them, so I decided to share them with the world! Here's my newest product:

Click the images to go to the download.

These skits really were a lot of fun and all the kids really liked them. The vocabulary was easy to understand even for the 4 year olds and they were entertaining for the other kids to watch their peers perform and practice. I typically have young students repeat lines after me in the beginning if they struggle reading, but for older students who are good readers, this can be used as a reader's theater center in the general classroom. I plan on trying it out on my top readers in guided reading in my Kindergarten class and will get back to you on that!

Let me know how you like these little skits! I love and appreciate all comments and feedback. :)