Folktales: Fairy Tales, Fables and an Adventure in ThingLink

Our district has created CCSS ELA units that were teacher created with the help of WestEd (in full disclosure I was one of the teachers on the ELA unit design committee for third grade) and our second unit's focus is Key Idea & Details: Reading for Meaning with a focus on fairy tales, folktales, fables, and tall tales for the literature piece and then a short (10 days) research project to address our RI standards for the unit.

I have seen a lot of very cute things on Pinterest, via blogs, and Facebook pages where teachers are printing out clip art to add to their anchor charts BEFORE they complete them with their students. Of course I had to do the same, and why I NEVER thought to do this in all my previous years of teaching I have no idea but this is just proof that PLNs, blog hopping, and following FB pages are helpful resources in planning for my class. Of course I wanted to make my anchor charts cute too! 

The content comes right from the Suggested Rich Task (SRT) from our unit & the clip art is from ThistleGirl Designs. 

Again, the content comes from the SRT from our unit & the clip art comes from ThistleGirl Designs.

I read "The Three Little Pigs" to the class, and we used the anchor chart to discuss elements of a fairy tale as we diagrammed the story.  This allowed us to discuss why each element is important to the overall story, as well as how it helped move the story along. Students then worked in pairs to diagram the Persian tale, "One Riddle, One Answer." We had a rich discussion regarding the theme, and whether every fairy tale needed to have 'good vs. evil' in order to actually be a fairy tale. Students then wrote a summary of the fairy tale and turned them in via the Google Classroom. The student graphic organizer was an exact replica of the anchor chart so that they were familiar with the elements and that they could move around the document in order to complete it as they determined that they had the necessary information for each section.

The following week we used the folktale graphic organizer to diagram "Nacho and Lolita." (This folktale always makes me cry!) Monday we will finish working with folktale before we start our Cinderella Around the World unit. (Once we are done with the unit, and I know if there needs to be adjustments or not to the materials, I will add these items to my TpT and TeacherWise stores.)

I have BIG plans for this Cinderella unit! Now the plans in my head (and in my lesson plan book) are perfect but as we know, nothing is ever perfect so I know there will be hiccups in this unit but still I am sure the unit is going to be a success! I of course, will update here as we work through it. The plan now is for 9 groups of 2 to read a Cinderella story, each from a different culture, to diagram and summarize the story, then to write a short opinion piece about the book they read. From there they will research the culture, make a ThingLink to share their work in a creative way. Following each groups completion of their ThingLink I intend to make a ThingLink with each group's work so that by clicking different areas in the ThingLink we can access each group's contribution. Now I have a lot to learn before I can put this together as I got the idea after seeing a ThingLink on Twitter (which I had favorited the link) where a teacher had each student create a ThingLink on a different state and then she embedded them in a map of the United States so that you could learn about each state by clicking on it and then on the various items in the ThingLink for that state.  This is an ambitious project, I know - but it is one I believe my class can handle and complete successfully. Time will tell of course, whether I am correct in this assumption or not but I can't wait to find out!