Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Tom Thumb -- we all listened to these stories over and over as children, and they are favorites among children today all over the world. Some, written over 300 years ago, have been subtly changed and translated into hundreds of languages.

This Integrate Project focuses on engaging students in grades 1-4 in activities which integrate Language Arts and Visual Arts curriculum with technology skills. In the introductory lesson, students listen to a fairy tale read by the teacher then discuss fairy tale themes and story elements, including jealousy, honesty, cleverness, foolishness, magic, setting, character traits, and story structure. Each student draws a picture representing one of the themes or elements from the tale. Students also practice story sequencing in a spreadsheet activity.

Students will utilize various parts of a webquest, The Realm of Fairy Tales by Judy Hoke, to read fairy tales online, compare and contrast fairy tales, and create a fairy tale story map. Many thanks to Judy for granting us permission to include her excellent webquest as part of this Integrate Project.

Technology skills practiced include sorting and filtering a database to compare and contrast fairy tale themes among various tales, copying and pasting in a spreadsheet sequencing activity, practicing English skills and inserting words in a word processing document, and creating a multimedia presentation to showcase their own fairy tale.

Wrap up the unit by solving a trivia puzzle created by Judy Hoke and revealing the secret message!

Note: If you are using Netscape on a Macintosh, you will not be able to open the student activities that use MS Excel. Please use Internet Explorer to open these files.

Fairy Tales Lesson Plan

Student Activities:

Queen_Mouse Sequencing (MS Excel)
Fairy Tale Themes Database (MS Excel)
Fairy Tales Comparison (MS Word)
Mad Lib Cinderella (MS Word)
PowerPoint Story Template (MS Powerpoint)
Fairy Tale Sample Story (MS Powerpoint) (created by Clara H., Age 7, Virginia)