Fairy tales are such an engaging way to teach reading comprehension and writing skills. Students love the stories and we love all of the teaching opportunities. We do a three-week-long unit on fairy tales. This post will share some of our favorite kindergarten fairy tale activities!
Fairy Tales: Retelling
For each story, we do a retelling chart focusing on the sequencing words: first, next, then, last. This skill is an important step in learning to summarize what you read. Before we create our chart, the students do a turn and talk to retell the story. Turn and talk is a great way to increase student talk and decrease teacher talk.
After we create our retelling chart, the students do their own retelling with words and pictures. The literacy standards say “with words and pictures” so that’s what we focus on in our class.
When the students finish their retelling page, they must come to me and tell me the story using their drawings. This allows me to assess their understanding of the story. I also use this opportunity to get them to add more details to their retelling.
Another comprehension skill we work on is story elements. We use story maps to identify characters, setting, and the plot. After creating our graphic organizer, students create their own story map. They can then turn and talk and discuss the story with a friend or they can share their story map with me.
Comprehension Skills
We use fairy tales to work on comprehension skills such as comparing and contrasting, problem/solution, character traits, and more!
Fairy Tales: Writing
A big focus of ours is writing in response to text and using text evidence. As part of our fairy tales unit, we do a lot of writing. We write about our favorite versions and our favorite fairy tale.
Graphing
After we read the True Story Of The Three Little Pigs, we turn and talk to discuss who we believe. And we have to explain why. Then we vote for who we believe. As they vote, they must tell us why they believe that character.
Fairy Tale Art And Science Ideas
Here are some fun ideas for fairy tale art projects!
These Goldilocks faces paper plates and torn paper.
These directed drawings of pigs are from Graphics From The Pond.
For Jack And The Beanstalk we made a giant coming down the beanstalk. For writing, you could have the students write about what they would do if they saw a giant.
After reading Three Billy Goats Gruff, we made trolls.
For a fun fairy tale science project, we make these exploding glitter princess cubes! When we squirt them with vinegar, they erupt and glitter spills out!
For all of the details on this science experiment, check out this post:
As a snack for our fairy tale unit, we eat porridge! Just like Goldilocks. And by porridge, we mean oatmeal!
Problem Solution Lesson
