Teaching Fairy Tales in Upper Elementary

Do your students love fairy tales? Teaching Fairy tales in upper elementary can be timeless, with the magic, exciting storylines, and fascinating characters. I love incorporating fairy tales into learning in my classroom! There are so many lessons to be learned! 

Here are some of the ways I teach using fairy tales:

Teaching Fairy Tales for Writing Practice

Children often know classic fairy tale stories inside and out. This means we can harness their interest and understanding of the stories to produce some great writing! For example, have students write about the main problem in the story, or write a few paragraphs about the lessons different characters learned in the fairy tale. 

Looking for help using fairy tales as a jumping-off point for practice writing? I created the Fairy Tale Writing Unit, Reading Graphic Organizers & Posters for this purpose!

• It’s a fantastic unit that includes plenty of writing worksheets that inspire students to write everything from news articles about characters to the re-writing of fairy tales, and more. Plus, this unit also includes reading comprehension work such as identifying and explaining the main idea in each fairy tale, Venn diagrams to compare stories, and more.
• Additionally, specific pages for some classic fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and more, are also included. Pick it up for an easy, fun, reading and writing unit featuring fairy tales!

GRAB THE FAIRY TALE BUNDLE HERE!

Teaching Fairy Tales for Reading Practice

Do you want your students to practice reading the fairy tales and answer reading comprehension questions about them? This is another great way to use fairy tales. 

Make sure you find reading-level appropriate fairy tale versions for your class. Then, you can create your own reading comprehension questions to go along with the story. Or, you can have students interview each other on the details of the story, pretending to be TV reporters. For example, you might have one student interview another student pretending to be Cinderella about her life, her stepsisters, and the ball. 

Another fun way to practice reading with fairy tales is with reader’s theater activities. In these activities, children have to both follow along as other students read, and read themselves! You can use these as small-group activities, or have the whole class participate in chorus reading. Plus, you can take the reader’s theater experience to another level by having the class perform the story as a play with scenery, costumes, and more! 

To make your life easier, I’ve created some reader’s theater resources on fairy tales.

• SHOP SET #1  features Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and the Frog Prince.
• SHOP SET #2  features The Little Mermaid, Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and Hansel and Gretel.

Each of the sets includes multiple-choice reading comprehension questions for each story and graphic organizer response options. Whisk your students away into fairy tales with these fun resources!

SHOP READERS THEATER SET #1 HERE 

SHOP READERS THEATER SET #2 HERE

Here are some of my favorite books with a different ending or twist

• The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
• The Other Side of the Story
• The Frog Prince Continued…
• And of course all the different versions of Cinderella

Take a peek here at all the books I have added to my list and library! 

I hope you love teaching fairy tales in your classroom as much as I do!

Tell me, which fairy tale is your favorite to teach? Get in touch with me on Instagram or send me an EMAIL ME HERE ! I’d love to hear from you!

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