Fairy Tale

UNIT PLAN

A fairy tale, or wonder tale, is a kind of folktale or fable. In these stories we meet witches and queens, giants and elves, princes, dragons, talking animals, ogres, princesses, and sometimes even fairies. Marvelous and magical things happen to characters in fairy tales. A boy may become a bird. A princess may sleep for a hundred years. A seal may become a girl. Objects too can be enchanted — mirrors talk, pumpkins become carriages, and a lamp may be home to a genie.

The oldest fairy tales were told and retold for generations before they were written down. French fairy tales were the first to be collected and written down, but now we can read fairy tales from almost any culture. When these stories were studied together, something amazing was discovered.

From countries as distant and different as Egypt and Iceland similar fairy tales are told. Both Egypt and Iceland have "Cinderella" stories, as do China, England, Korea, Siberia, France, and Vietnam; and the list doesn't stop there. There may be a thousand versions of the Cinderella story, each with a unique telling which carries cultural information about the time and place the story was told. One thing is for sure; people everywhere like stories in which truth prevails over deception, generosity is ultimately rewarded, hard work overcomes obstacles, and love, mercy and kindness are the greatest powers of all.

In this project students will take a classic fairy tale and rewrite in a completely different culture replacing all the 5 Themes of Geography listed in the fairy tale with appropriate themes that would be experienced in the new Culture.

Unit Resources

Resources

Use the culture gram page to locate the pdf of the country you will use as the new location of your fairy tale. Each country pdf contains lots of useful information for the questionnaire you will need to fill-in. In addition, use the web to get appropriate information to rewrite your fairy tale.

Steps to making the Final Product

Project Examples

I will show examples in Class, unfortunately previous students have used examples and simply copied the content when I make them available to see.

Beauty and Beast.pdf
Robin Hood Rewrite (1).pdf
Goldie Locks.pdf
Fairy Tale Example 1.pdf
Sleeping Beauty.pdf
Little Red Riding Hood Japanese version.pdf
2019.pdf