Fairy tales from all over the world hold great appeal for children of all ages and backgrounds. They are stories filled with magic, high adventure, humor, gripping suspense and lavish settings. They allow children to identify with the hero or heroine in the arduous battle against evil where the 'good guy' usually wins in the end.
I plan to use a selection of fairy tales from around the world as the basis of my curriculum unit in order to help my third-graders develop valuable insights into different cultures and their values. I also hope to lead them to the realization that there are identifiable universal themes of honesty, courage, etc., that all people share. These tales will, no doubt, be less familiar to American children and, in that sense, new and fresh, and so, hopefully, they will cause my students to make connections with some of the more familiar fairy tales with which they grew up.
This unit is divided into 5 sections:
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Section I
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The Genre of Fairy Tales
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Section II
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Fairy Tales Featuring Princes, Princesses and Magical Transformations
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Section III
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Fairy Tales Featuring Dragons
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Section IV
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Fairy Tales Featuring Kind Talking Animals
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Section V
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Writing a Fairy Tale
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This unit will be interdisciplinary in scope (incorporating reading, writing listening, speaking, drama, art and social studies skills), and will, I believe, provide stories of high interest that will motivate even the most reluctant reader and writer. A good fairy tale leaves us spellbound, as if by magic. That, I think, is its real value.
(Developed for Reading, Writing, and Social Studies, grade 3; recommended for Reading, Writing, and Social Studies, grades 2-6)
