Five for Friday!

It's time...

We have started our study of fairy tales. I love this unit. Here are a few days of lessons that we've completed.
Day 1 started out by brainstorming famous fairy tales. Many kids were surprised to find out that Disney did not write the fairy tales they knew from the movies! I had the kids turn and talk with their reading partner about elements of fairy tales. They came up with this list:

I then sent them off to read a fairy tale with their partner. They had to list 3 elements they found on a sticky and place them on our Exit Slip board. It was a good quick assessment.

Day 2 we reviewed the anchor chart. I showed the book Strega Nona by Tomie DePaolo.

I asked students to look at the cover and to turn and talk about anything they saw that could indicate this was a fairy tale. They came up with the idea that the lady looks like a witch with a magic pot and that possibly the animals could talk. It also looked like a story set long ago. I read the book aloud, stopping at strategic places for turn and talk time. I kept asking if there was anything they heard that would indicate it was a fairy tale. They came up with quite a few elements and in the end we determined it was. The goal of the lesson was to have them recognize a fairy tale may not be the traditional stories they are more familiar with, but authors write stories with the same elements.

Day 3 we reviewed the elements again. I introduced the story The Rough-Face Girl.

This is an Algonquin Cinderella story. After reading it aloud, we were guided into a discussion of adaptations of fairy tales and how cultures infuse their own values into stories. During the read loud they, again, turned and talked about elements of fairy tales they heard. I then assigned a Cinderella book to each pair of students to read, discuss, and write notes about. We came back as a group to discuss what they had found.

Day 4 gave students a chance to practice finding elements of fairy tales during Read to Someone time. I assigned partners my fairy tale graphic organizer along with a traditional story. They worked hard again reading and discussing and writing.

That's where we are right now. We will continue to read and study fairy tales, moving into writing our own.

It's state testing time. Next week we will be testing for 4 days (4 LONG days). Testing makes the week crawl by. Being out of our routine is torture for me! We have been practicing test taking strategies. Here is an anchor chart that we have referred to quite often over the last couple weeks.

This weekend I'll be putting together some little treat bags for the first day using Tootsie Rolls and these little tags I created. Check them out at my TpT store.

Speaking of my TpT store...hop on over for a sale on Sunday and Monday!