ONE two-three: Fairy Tales- Comparative Literature

Readers Theatre

Research shows that “Repeated Oral Reading" improves reading fluency and comprehension, especially when it includes reading role models.Reader’s theater truly engages students and is the most popular form of “repeated guided oral reading.” Reader’s theater provides a dramatic text that does not require memorization, props or a stage.The acting out of story dialogue compels readers to work more closely with the text to interpret and project meaning into the experience. As a result, students show improvement in vocabulary, comprehension and retention. Our literacy groups have been working on improving reading rate, expression and fluency. Throughout the week, each group created puppets, rehearsed their Readers Theatre piece and then performed for the class.

Fairy Tale Trading Cards

While examining the elements of a story, we began to focus on the aspects of fairy tale characters. Capitalizing on the children's current interest in Pokemon cards, we created trading cards examining the likes, dislikes, strengths, setting and qualities of fairy tale characters.

Multi-Cultural Cinderella

The purpose of this study is to help the children develop an appreciation for stories from different cultures, to show our similarities and differences, and to appreciate the cultures from which these stories originate.

We have read many variations of Cinderella and Cinderlad stories from all around the world and created a large wall chart to compare the important elements from each story. In small groups we will study different cultures and have created stunning life size paintings of 8 multicultural Cinderellas and Cinderlads.