A Mixed-Up Fairy Tale

Does teaching writing make you cringe?  Do you think about how you want to teaching the writing process, but go beyond the pencil clip chart?  This mixed-up fairy tale activity has everything you need to take your students writing, and your writing instruction to the next level.

Encourage the Creativity 

I absolutely love teaching fairy tales! I usually use fairy tales to review concepts, such as plot, characters (protagonist and antagonist), and conflict. This always works out well, because most of my students have heard, or read, at least one fairy tale in their life and are able to connect these concepts to either a film or a book they already know.  Now, the one thing I always use my fairy tale unit to really dive into point of view. My students love to hear the different fairy tales told from different point of views!  Trust Me, Jack's Beanstalk Stinks! by Eric Braun is a fan favorite! 

The Power of Choice

I am PASSIONATE about taking teaching outside the textbook and giving students choice in what they are learning about.  Throughout this unit, I have every student select their very own fairy tale, this is one that they will be pulling apart as we practice the different skills and concepts.  (I have a no repeat rule in my classroom, very rarely does anyone get to study the exact same thing.)   I have done this in a couple different ways over the years.  Sometimes, I allow, what I call 'picture book fairy tales.'  These are the picture book version of the beloved tale.  Other years, I have had them read the original tales.  This is always a lot of fun, because my students often times, have never heard the original stories.  My boys, specifically, usually gravitate towards the original tales. On rare occasions, I allow either, by doing that it allows for differentiation in my classroom, naturally. As we work through the different skills, I often model the skill with a fairy tale I read aloud to my class, then I have every student practice the same skill, based off of their specific fairy tale.  For this, I just have them work on a google doc. (Nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done!)

Encourage the Craziness

After it is all said and done, I assess my students by having them write their own fairy tale! It's so much fun to see the whole thing come together!  Their is a lot of freedom in this project, however, they need to incorporate the different elements we studied through the unit such as...

• Obvious Point of View
• Protagonist and Antagonist
• Conflict
• Theme
• Elements of a Fairy Tale

They also have to choose ONE character from their specific fairy tale and AT LEAST one element (setting, character, conflict, exc.) from a fairy tale we read in class. Of course, outside of that they get to create their own story.  They always turn out so well!

The Final Product 

Since my students pour in so much to these stories, I always end up publishing them for the entire class.  My 5th graders design covers for our class 'Fairy Tale Digest' and vote on the winner!  Then, I bind the stories together and give each student their own copy, complete with all the stories they wrote.  I love how all the kids are excited to read, not only their published work, but the published work of their classmates.  Check the product out in TPT store, you won't be disappointed!