Unit Plan: Fairy Tales

Fairy Tales

While I was student teaching in the first grade classroom, one of my responsibilities was to create and teach a lesson on fairy tales. This classroom uses Core Knowledge Foundation (2013) to guide teaching.

The central focus of this unit was to teach the different elements of a fairy tale. The students showed their knowledge of fairy tales by completing a graphic organizer with the different elements identified as well as composing their own fairy tale.

Halfway through my student teaching placement, I had to switch to online instruction. With communication from the parents and families, we were able to finish the fairy tale unit and many of the students turned in final copies of their fairy tale.

This page includes a video of me closing a lesson, a video tutorial on fairy tales and how to write one, and student work samples from in the classroom, as well as their remote work. Also included are samples of feedback which I gave to each individual student.

We began the unit by reading many different fairy tales. We used the chart paper that I made (left) to track what fairy tales we have read so far. For each fairy tale, we check off the different elements and described them.

Sometimes fairy tales did not have every element, so we would discuss this and find the other reasons why it is still a fairy tale (Example: Hansel and Gretel did not have royalty).

StudentShareOpeningSentence.MOV

The last detail we added to the graphic organizer before beginning our rough draft was the opening sentence and the title. As a closure to this lesson, I invited two students to share their work.

Above you will see three examples of student work. I brought all of the students' work home with me and gave feedback to each individual student. Each student had between 3 and 6 pages of work, including the graphic organizer and illustration. I took a picture of each piece of work and sent the pictures to parents on Class Dojo. This helped to remind the students where they last left off with their fairy tale so they could easily pick it back up.

Fairy Tale Presentation.mp4

After switching to remote teaching and learning, I had to quickly come up with a way for students to complete their fairy tale from home. I decided to create this presentation and do a voice over to explain what fairy tales are, the elements of a fairy tale, and how to write your own fairy tale. This video is a step-by-step guide to walk parents and students through what we learned in the classroom. I then discuss how to finish composing their fairy tale and how to submit it to me.

Below are a few examples of final copy fairy tales I received after switching to remote instruction. Along with each final copy is the scored rubric I sent home to the students. The parents and I used Class Dojo to communicate and to send me their final copies.

All students have permission to be photographed.

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