Additional Activities
These activities offer options for continuing the learning in this unit. Whether your curriculum is skill-based or more open-ended, select the activities that are most appropriate for the children in your classroom. The Writing Spot is primarily a writing program, but writing can be integrated throughout your curriculum—in art, drama, reading, math, and science.
Divide children into groups, assigning each a different fairy tale. Then have the groups share their fairy tales. They will need some guidance and suggestions for doing this. Examples: (1) one child tells the story while others act it out, (2) each child has a role to play in an improvisation, (3) small groups put on puppet shows, and so on.
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Retell a favorite fairy tale.
As a volunteer retells a favorite fairy tale, write it down on the board or on chart paper. Have students take turns telling the parts of the story until it is finished. This activity models continuous writing and also provides a text for students to read.
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Share animal-cracker stories.
Hand out animal crackers for snack time. Ask children to sort them, count them, and eat them. Invite students to share any stories that these animal shapes bring to mind.
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Practice good listening skills at story-sharing time.
Discuss how to be good listeners when someone is sharing a story. What should people do if they can’t see the pictures or hear the words? How should they behave if they are not interested in the story? What should they say to the storyteller when the story is over? Have the children practice their story-listening manners. Also make a large class poster, with the students’ help, listing important listening rules.
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Invite storytellers to your classroom.
Ask your school librarian or local public library for a list of community storytellers. Invite some of these people to your class to share cultural folktales, familiar fairy tales, or original stories.
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Find the places where stories come from.
Read fairy tales and folktales that originated in other parts of the world. Find these faraway places on a globe. Share information about the people and customs in these original settings.
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Create a story as easy as 1-2-3.
Give individuals or small groups of children three story elements to work with—for example, two skunks, a hollow tree, and a flower. Challenge children to build a story around the three elements. They may write, dictate, or record their stories to share with the class, or plan out and tell their stories, or simply act out the stories.
Provide different versions of fairy tales; compare and contrast them.
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Pretend to be a character in a favorite story.
Play this game after you have shared many different stories. Each child pretends to be a character from one of the stories that you’ve shared. After the child provides a few character-specific actions, he or she asks the class, “Guess who I am?” The child may also give verbal clues until someone guesses the identity.
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Make sense of mixed-up stories.
Mix up the key events in a well-known story and write them on the board. Ask children to put them in correct order. You may also choose to tell the story out of order; afterward with the class input, discuss what the mistakes were.
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Write a folktale for your region.
Read a variety of folktales to your class, stories from various states and regions. Find these places on a map. Don’t overlook famous folk heroes like Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed. Finally, with help from the children, create one of your own folktales appropriate to your area.
