Teaching Writing through Fairy Tales (Unit 1)

      I.      Title: Teaching Writing through Fairy Tales

    II.      Introduction:

A.     Teaching Context: I will be teaching this unit in an 8^th grade English classroom located in a small town in Northern Michigan. This classroom is in a middle school with about 350 students. 100 of these students are in my class, broken up into four sections of 25 students. The town itself has very little diversity both in race and financial background. Most of the students have been in this same school district since elementary school and know each other fairly well, however there are new students in the class as well.

I would be teaching this unit in the second or third month of the school year. This will allow them to be warmed up to my classroom and each other, but also give them time to further develop the skills they learn in this unit and apply it to the rest of the school year. By high school, I’m hoping they would be able to produce quality writing from the skills they learned throughout this class.

B.     Rational for Unit: This unit will prepare students to write their own fairy tales. While the focus is on fairy tales, students will be working with many other useful tools they will use as they further develop their reading and writing skills.

1.      What students will learn:

• Fairy tales are not only for children.
• Fairy tales have underlying messages that often show the values of society.
• Fairy tales follow a pattern, which include a beginning, middle, end, as well as conflict and more specifically a “good” and “bad” character and a magical component.
• There are many different literary concepts that writers use to enhance their writing.
• There are many different types of sentences, which are used to create a flow for readers.
• An effective story utilizes the “show don’t tell” method of writing.
• Polished writing typically requires writers to compose multiple drafts, share with others for input, and revise their work.

Students will be able to:

• Define literary terms and find examples of them within literature.
• Find the societal value represented in a fairy tale.
• Write different types of sentences, including proper punctuation, and identify them.
• Adapt a classic fairy tale to a more modern version.
• Show rather than tell.
• Give and receive helpful feedback.
• Write their own fairy tale, compose multiple drafts, and polish their fairy tale to share it with the class.

2.      What will be assessed: Written examples of literary terms and sentence types will be graded on completion. If students do not complete the required amount of examples, students will be given a lower grade. Fairy tales adaptations will be graded on whether they did them or not, and original fairy tales will be graded on a rubric. Informal activities will include group work and class discussion, such as class editing where students will give suggestions to a student’s paper presented on a projector.

3.      What students will do:

• Students will perform “Wild West Cinderella” (reader’s theatre), as well as read “Rapunzel” by Brothers Grimm and “Beauty and the Beast” by LePrince de Beaumont.
• Students will explore, define, and demonstrate literary terms that are present in most fairy tales (handout) and discuss the effect of them on stories.
• Students will discover societal values embedded in fairy tales, bring in their own examples of modern fairy tales, and discuss how society values shown in fairy tales change over time.
• Students will create a definition of fairy tales.
• Students will study, identify, and compose different sentence types.
• Students will adapt a fairy tale to their own modern version and discuss why they made the changes they did.
• Students will map their fairy tales, including deciding what societal value their fairy tale will represent.
• Students will learn what it means to show rather than tell, then practice and include it in the fairy tale.
• Students will write a fairy tale, presenting and turning in a polished draft.
• Students will participate in a group editing session followed by peer edition sessions to improve their work.

4.      How students will learn: Although these students are pretty far removed from fairy tales, I am sure that they will all be familiar with them. This familiarity would help them to better understand the unit. It will take something familiar and simple and dissect it to look at and understand more complex literary concepts.

While students will be familiar with fairy tales, they will be exposed to many different new concepts in this lesson. To help students to understand this new material, I will utilize group work as well as full class discussion. With this approach, students will not have to rely on their own understanding, but will have the help of the class as a whole as well as myself as their guide to gain a richer understanding. I have learned that doing things as a class rather than independently helps students learn. Although a student may not be a very active learner, by having to participate in group work and collected class work, they may be able to learn and understand more.

In addition to group work, each piece of new material we go over in class will be brought back into the context of fairy tales. For example, when we go over literary terms, we will talk about them within fairy tales. When we go over different sentence types, we will find them in fairy tales. When we learn to show rather than tell, we will dive into editing the students’ paper to reflect the specific details. This pattern of always learning and applying will help students to apply their knowledge to their final fairy tale.  When we talked in class about how grammar will stay in grammar books if that is the way in which it is taught, I realized that it will be helpful to spend time connecting definitions, mechanics, and grammar to the overall unit, in this case being fairy tales.  Because students learn by repetition, I am hoping that this constant learn and apply method will teach them to do this later in their education.

For some parts of my unit, I have a specific way I would like to go about teaching them.

For show and not tell, I plan to present students with a sentence that may be very bland such as: She was good. Although this sentence tells students that the character is good, it fails to show them how or why. Students will have to come up with characteristics of someone who people think of as good. What would a good girl look like? How would she act? What would she do? In Lessons to Share on Teaching Grammar in Context, Scott Peterson talks about a similar activity. Students must improve a passage by placing all sensory details within it. This helps readers to put themselves in the story and better understand it.

In addition to “show don’t tell,” I would like to approach peer editing in a different way as well. The reason for this is that I have learned through multiple English classes that students do not always give their classmates helpful feedback. I want to work with the full class to show them how to give effective criticism. This is demonstrated in Day 17 in which I have written out a lesson plan for. Through this, they will understand what things they should look for to help a fellow student improve their writing.

C.     Texts:

• Wild West Cinderella: Students will perform this Wild West version of Cinderella, written as a play. Because they already know the story of Cinderella, they will be able to see a different side of it when first stepping into the genre. If I were to present the classic version of Cinderella, I feel as though students will be bored by simply reading it and by the fact that they have heard it many times.
• “Rapunzel” by Brothers Grimm: To develop our understanding of fairy tales, students will read this to compare it to the overall story of Cinderella. They will compare and contrasts characteristics to broaden or limit their view of the genre.
•  “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont: To continue discovering what fairy tales really are, this third piece will contribute to the class’s final definition of what a fairy tale is.
•  Choice Example: Students will bring in their own example of a fairy tale that was adapted to modern society. They will discover how the societal values represented in fairy tales have changed over time. This will show students how writers of fairy tales take a classic fairy tale and change it so that they can do this themselves as practice before writing their own original fairy tale.

D.      Big Ideas: This unit will be covering many dimensions. Not only will students be developing their writing while writing their own fairy tales, but they will be analyzing fairy tales and finding similar components. We will look into types of sentence structure, various vocabulary words, look at author’s techniques including symbolism and imagery, find social values within fairy tales, and students will evaluate themselves and other according to given standards. When many of these have been completed, they will then be able to set a purpose for their writing and consider their audience, use pre-writing activities, go through revision and proofreading stages, and in the end be able to write a cohesive narrative piece, being their fairy tales.

In addition to contributing to my students as writers, studying fairy tales will also help them to understand society around them. Fairy tales are embedded in our culture from a young age, and we grow up to believe in or simply identify with many of the things presented in them. For example, a girl may believe that she should be treated like a princess and identify with Cinderella when she is given less than that. A boy may want to work hard so that he can one day find his princess. Through learning about their culture and society, students may learn more about themselves.

E.       Alterations: As I was writing this lesson, I realized that I was going to ask students to look at how fairy tales were written before giving them the necessary tools to do so. Before asking them to find similar mechanical characteristics, I plan to first give a lesson to show them different types of sentences that they will find in fairy tales.

When I first posted my lesson plan, my goals for students’ understanding and skills were in a paragraph format. I also had posted the content standards I hoped to achieve in this lesson. From a few of my classmates, I was asked if I planned to put it in more students-friendly language. At first, I thought this was just a supplement anyway, but then I realized that by making the goals bullet points rather than having them drawn out in a paragraph, it would more clearly define what the goals for my class were.

F.      Works Cited

Anderson, Hans Christian. “Cinderella.” Web.

Brothers Grimm. “Rapunzel.” Web.

LePrince de Beaumont, Jeanne-Marie. “Beauty and the Beast.” Web.

Peterson, Scott. “Teaching Writing and Grammar in Context.” Lessons to Share on Teaching Grammar in Context. Ed. Constance Weaver. New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc, 1998. 67-94.

III.      The Unit Itself:

M	T	W	Th	F
1Read Western Cinderella as a reader’s theatre – discuss characteristics of a fairy tale.	2Handout: Literary terms related to fairy tales – students will define them & compose examples	3Continued discussion on literary concepts – what do they do to the story (social values)	4Read Rapunzel – find what similarities to Cinderella & characteristics of a fairy tale – find examples of literary concepts & find the social value	5Read Beauty and the Beast – find similarities between the other fairy tales – examples of literary concepts & find the social value
6Review fairy tales – create a definition of fairy tales.	7Lesson on sentence types – simple, compound, complex.What common sentence structures and mechanics do fairy tales share? Students will practice writing different sentences.	8Review of sentence types – we will go over these as a class and cover punctuation.HW: Students will find at least one adapted version of a fairy tale.	9Different versions of fairy tales and discuss how they change and adapt. What are the social values?	10Students will choose a fairy tale to make their own version of it. They will have time to write in class and have the rest for homework over the weekend.HW: Finish adaptations
11Students will share what they changed about the fairy tales and why.	12Continued discussion on fairy tale variation – lead into students creating their own. Map out fairy tales.	13Continued mapping of stories. How will this story also represent a value?	14Students will begin to write their fairy tales.	15Continued writing – they will complete this over the weekendHW: Fairy tale drafts
16In class, we will go over how to show rather than telling.HW: Student volunteers, emails me their drafts	17Review of show not tell, we will work on editing as a class via student volunteers.	18Student peer editing	19Time for polishing drafts	20Additional time for polishing drafts – continued as homework.  HW: Fairy tale final drafts
21Fairy tales are due – students will read them in groups or to the class.	22Continued presentations

Day 2: Connecting Literary Terms to Fairy Tales
Materials: literary terms handout, lined paper, pencils
Connection	Good afternoon! Yesterday we read in class the Western version of Cinderella. We also looked at what made a fairy tale a fairy tale. Today, we’re going to discover some of those things more closely, looking at different types of literary concepts that are used in fairy tales we may not always point out.	0
Teaching Point	I am passing out a sheet of paper with a list of literary terms. With the help of a partner, you will be looking these up in the dictionary to discover their meanings. This will not be graded, but instead, it will serve as a guide as we continue learning about these concepts. During this time, I will be passing out the handouts along with dictionaries. They will be allowed to work with whomever they choose.	1
Active Engagement	Students will work to complete the handout.	3
Teaching Point	Now that you have completed the handout, let’s discuss these terms. I will ask a student volunteer to give me their definition of the term and ask the class if they know of an example. If not, I will explain this to them e.g. Can someone tell me what they have written down for simile? Who can give me an example of a simile?	15
Formative Assessment	Now that we have discovered these new terms, you will be writing your own examples of these. I will be passing out a blank sheet of paper, and you will choose five of these terms to make an example for.	30
Reinforcement & Sending	We’re out of time! Please turn in what you have for me today. Thanks for your participation today!	50

Day 8: Focus on Sentence Structure
Materials: fairy tales
Connection	We have been diving into fairy tales for the past week and looking at their similarities. We have found that they represent society in different ways, they have a good and a bad character, and they typically end happily. What we haven’t done is looked at them structurally – how are fairy tales written?
Teaching Point	Yesterday, we looked at different types of sentences. Who can tell me one type of sentence? (Students will give the three examples – simple, compound, complex). Great! Now, I’d like you to take out the sentences that you wrote yesterday with your partners. Please get together with that partner, and we will look at these as a class.	1
Active Engagement	Each group will be giving an example of one of your sentences. We will start with a simple sentence – who would like to volunteer? As students say their sentences, I will be writing them on the board. When they finish reading them, I will ask them what punctuation they had written, and if anything is missing, I will ask the class if they know of something else the sentence needs. If not, I will show them they need a ____ here because _____. We will continue this until every pair has given their example to the class.	4
Formative Assessment	I will take note of which students seem to be getting the sentences correctly and which ones are struggling.
Teaching Point	Great job creating your own sentence. Now we will look at how fairy tales are written. I have all of the fairy tales that we have been looking at. I would like you to come up and choose one that you can look at more closely. Just browse it – you already know what it’s about – but what do you notice? What types of sentences or punctuation is included in the stories? You will break up into groups according to which story you choose to look at to discuss the mechanics in the story. Your group will have ten minutes to find three different structural characteristics. You may want to think about – how is the story told? How are sentences written? Are there different types of sentences? What types of punctuation are used? How does the story flow or not flow? When you are finished, we will discuss these characteristics as a group and see if we can find some similarities that we can apply to all fairy tales. Please come up and grab a fairy tale and find two, three, or four other students to work with. Please no more than five to a group.	24
Active Engagement	Now that you have learned about different sentences and looked at how fairy tales are written, let’s see if we can create a common list of structure similarities. Students will give the examples we found, and I will write them on the board. We will end with a “guideline” for writing fairy tales.	34
Reinforcement	You all did really well composing your own sentences yesterday and using that to discover what kind of mechanics are used in fairy tales.	48
Sending	Thank you all for participating. For tomorrow’s class, please think of an example of a fairy tale that you have come across represented in a different way. This may be a movie, a song, or another book. Think about a way that someone has adapted a fairy tale to society changes. We will be discussing these tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day!	49

Day 17: Showing and not telling
Materials: projector, student samples for class editing.
Connection	Yesterday, we learned that it is more effective to show your readers rather than tell them. This is a very important piece in fairy tales. Does anyone know why this is? I will be looking for the reason that stories are read as entertainment and you want to allow the reader or listener to picture in their mind what is happening in the story.
Teaching Point	Last week, you spent time mapping out your stories, integrating a society value in your stories, and putting it all together to write them. Although you spent time over the weekend finishing those up, the best writing comes from multiple drafts and multiple eyes to make improvements. Today we will be looking at a few samples from your class to see how we can make them better. Not only will we will at sentences and punctuation, but we will try to help the writer to show us rather than tell us about the details in the story.	5
Active Engagement	I will read the paper aloud by paragraph and we will look at them individually. I will ask questions to guide students to criticize their peer’s writing such as: What does this sentence show you? Can you imagine the setting or what the character looks like? How can we change this sentence to make it better?	8
Formative Assessment	I will note which students seem to understand and volunteering to offer suggestions. Students who are not speaking, I will ask them if they have any suggestions and try to get each student to speak at least once. If a student is having trouble, I will explain why it doesn’t need to be changed or ask other students if they can help. Each time a student offers a good suggestion to improve the writing. I will congratulate good suggestions.
Reinforcement	You all did really well helping critique these students’ writing.	48
Sending	Tomorrow, you will all need to bring in your drafts to peer edit with one partner. Keep in mind what suggestions we gave to the students’ papers we looked at today so you can help your partners tomorrow get the most out of their story.

   IV.      Assignment completed by teacher:

        Mirabella                   

Once upon a time there was a girl named Mirabella. She was a simple girl who grew up in a small town. She had long brown hair, blue eyes that looked like the sky, and dimples that showed when she smiled. Mirabella did well in school and always had something nice to say, even when people were not nice to her, like her sister Jamie. Jamie had choppy red hair and freckles and her eyes were never as bright at Mirabella’s were. Not only that, but she was not as nice as Mirabella. Jamie had an attitude and was often talking too loudly about things most people did not care about. Although their parents saw how different they each were, they treated them equally and always showed how much they loved them. Mirabella knew that for now, she did not need a man to make her feel loved. In fact, Mirabella waited until she was grown and had gone to college to even think about it.

When she moved to college, everything was different. She met people unlike anyone she had ever known. It was as if she had entered a whole new world.

It was not long before she met a man who lived down the hall from her. He was tall, dark, and handsome, as she had heard so many people refer to in the past. His name was Matt. He was always kind, not just to Mirabella, but to everyone. He offered to help those in need, listened to others’ problems, and was always there to make people smile with a joke. Matt and Mirabella quickly became friends.

They talked about everything – their dreams, their goals, what they thought about various things. They would eat together, laugh together, and stay up late together. Mirabella was so excited about this new friendship that she just had to tell someone. Jamie was her closest girl friend, so she decided to give her a call.

“I met a man!” Mirabella said excitedly.

“Oh yeah? What is he like?” Jamie asked. Jamie never had someone to love her, but she claimed to like it better that way.

“He really is tall, dark, and handsome like everyone always talks about! He is so kind and is really fun to be around,” Mirabella explained everything great about Matt. This went on for several minutes until finally, her sister interrupted her.

“Good luck ever getting a man like that to love you,” Jamie said with a sneer. She then hung up the phone before Mirabella could get in another word.

Mirabella was very sad by what Jamie had said but thought that surely it could not be true. She knew that she could not talk to Matt about it, so she decided to look to someone who brought her comfort no matter what.

“Mother, do you think that it is possible a man that is so handsome and kind would not love me?” Mirabella asked when she called her mother on the phone.

“Of course not! A man would be crazy not to love you,” she replied kindly.

Mirabella shrugged off her sister’s comment and continued talking with her mother about all of the new things going on in their lives. Little did she know that Jamie was working up something horrible to ensure Mirabella would not be loved.

Life seemed to go on as usual and she and Matt continued their laughter until one day she woke up and felt a little strange. She rose from her bed and groggily walked over to the mirror to find something horrible. Her brown hair had become frayed, her eyes a dull gray, and her face was swollen with pimples. “Oh no!” Mirabella shouted. “Matt cannot see me like this or else he really will never love me!”

Two hundred miles away, Jamie was snickering as she looked into her magical mirror to see what Mirabella was also seeing.

“My plan worked!” she shouted to herself. Jamie continued to laugh as she watched Mirabella try to change her sudden misfortune.

Mirabella started rigorously combing her hairs, hoping it would begin to look more normal. When she was finished, she stepped into the shower to wash her hair as well as her face, throbbing from the welts her sister had created. When she stepped out of the shower, her face was still swollen, and her hair dried to the same tangled mess.

She continued to worry about being seen, locking the doors and trying to keep quiet so no one would know she was even in her room. “There has to be a way I can fix this,” she said to herself. She began to think of more ways to fix this horrible mess.

Mirabella rummaged through her cupboard to find leave-in conditioner and exfoliating face wash to try and mend her appearance again. After a long time of hopeless attempts, she realized that there was no way of changing what had happened to her. Still afraid of what people would think, she stayed in her room, silent. It had been hours of skipped classes and even lunch when she heard a knock at the door.

“Mirabella? Are you in there?” Mirabella could hear Matt’s worried voice on the other side of the door.

Mirabella was completely silent. She did not know what to do.

Another knock, but this time it was louder.

“Mirabella, please answer the door!” he called again, this time sounding more worried than before.

“I can’t!” Mirabella replied.

“Mirabella! Thankfully you’re okay! I was so worried when you didn’t show up for lunch! What is wrong?”

“I just can’t have you seeing me like this,” Mirabella called back in a sad voice.

“Nonsense. You’re always beautiful,” Matt said.

For a moment, there was complete silence. Matt had never said this to Mirabella since they had been friends. Mirabella opened the door smiling, forgetting about the face she woke up to. When she did, Matt began to smile too.

“Your hair and your face do not need to be perfect. Your eyes don’t even need to be blue. I can still see the spark in them, and that smile there? It’s still the same no matter what.” Thankful that Matt didn’t grimace, Mirabella took a few steps closer to him.

“When you weren’t there to eat lunch with me, I realized how much I loved your laugh and your beautiful voice when you tell me about your day. I missed how you listen to what I have to say too, because not everyone does. I realized that I really love you,” Matt said, reaching for a hug.

Mirabella smiled even more widely and put her arms around him. “I love you too,” she said.

Matt kissed Mirabella’s forehead and she felt the swelling in her face go down. Her hair smoothed into its silky self.

“Your eyes are beautiful,” Matt said, looking deeply into them into Mirabella’s returned blue eyes.

Mirabella was changed back with a simple kiss. Matt took her hand and they lived happily ever after.

The end.

     V.      Summative assessment plan:

	5	3	1	0
Structure (x2)	I clearly demonstrated my understanding of a fairy tale, including all key elements of a fairy tale in my story.	I mostly demonstrated my understanding of a fairy tale, including most key elements of a fairy tale in my story.	I partly demonstrated my understanding of a fairy tale, including some key elements of a fairy tale in my story.	I did not demonstrate my understanding of a fairy tale and did not include any key elements of a fairy tale.
Theme (x2)	I included an underlying message that represented a value of society and effectively showed it throughout the story.	I included an underlying message that represented a value of society and effectively showed it, although not consistently through the story.	I included an underlying message of some sort, but it was confusing and not obvious to the reader.	I did not include an underlying message.
Literary concepts (x2)	I correctly labeled three literary terms used in my fairy tale.	I correctly labeled two literary terms used in my fairy tale.	I correctly labeled one literary term used in my fairy tale.	I did not label any terms, or labeled them incorrectly.
Sentence  Structure (x2)	I included all three types of sentences in my fairy tale and correctly highlighted and labeled an example of each.	I included two types of sentences in my fairy tale and correctly highlighted and labeled an example of both.	I included one type of sentence in my fairy tale and correctly highlighted and labeled my example.	I did not correctly highlight or label any examples of different sentence types.
Show don’t tell (x2)	I effectively showed my reader rather than told them throughout my fairy tale.	I effectively showed my reader rather than told them, but only in parts of my fairy tale.	I attempted to show my reader rather than tell them, but was not successful.	I did not make use of the “show don’t tell” method.
Grammar & mechanics	I had less than three minor grammatical mistakes.	I had less than three grammatical mistakes, but they were distracting to the reader.	I had three to five grammatical mistakes that were distracting to the reader.	I had more than five grammatical mistakes and the quality of my story greatly suffered.
Editing	I used suggestions given to me by my peers effectively and demonstrated a major change between my first and polished draft.	I used suggestions given to me by my peers, but changes between my first and polished draft were lacking.	I only used a few suggestions given to me by my peers and changes between my first and polished draft were minimal.	I failed to use suggestions given to me by my peers and made slight to no changes from my first and polish draft.

 Total _____/ 60

Fairy Tale Unit | Literary Terms 

Name: _____________________________

Date: ____/____/____

Period: _______

Directions | Examples of the following terms can be found in many fairy tales. To better understand fairy tale stories that we read in class and how they are written, you will need to know these terms. With the help of a dictionary, define each of the terms written below:

Allegory:

Antagonist:

First-person:

Foil:

Imagery:

Metaphor:

Motif:

Personification:

Protagonist:

Satire:

Simile:

Symbolism:

Third-person:

Grade Level Content Expectations  | 8^th Grade:

R.WS.08.01 explain and use word structure, sentence structure, and prediction to aid in decoding and understanding the meanings of words encountered in context.

R.WS.08.07 in context, determine the meaning of words and phrases including content area vocabulary and literary terms using strategies including activating prior knowledge, using text features/structures, and authentic content-related resources.

 R.NT.08.04 analyze author’s craft including symbolism, imagery, and consistency to develop credible narrators, rising and falling actions, and minor characters.

R.CM.08.03 analyze global themes, universal truths, and principles within and across texts to create a deeper understanding by drawing conclusions, making inferences, and synthesizing.

R.CS.08.01 evaluate the appropriateness of shared, individual and expert standards based on purpose, context, and audience in order to assess their own writing and the writing of others.

W.GN.08.01 write a cohesive narrative piece such as poetry, historical fiction, science fiction, or realistic fiction that includes appropriate conventions to genre employing literary and plot devices (e.g., narrator credibility, rising and falling actions and/or conflict, imagery and transitional language).

W.PR.08.01 set a purpose, consider audience, and replicate authors’ styles and patterns when writing a narrative or informational piece.

W.PR.08.02 apply a variety of pre-writing strategies for both narrative (e.g., graphic organizers designed to depict rising and falling actions, roles of minor characters, credibility of narrator) and informational writing (e.g., compare/contrast, cause/effect, or sequential text patterns)

W.PR.08.04 revise drafts for coherence and consistency in word choice, structure, and style; and read their own work from another reader’s perspective.

W.PR.08.05 proofread and edit writing using grade-level checklists and other appropriate resources both individually and in groups.

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