Writing Fractured Fairy Tales in the Classroom

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Categories : Lesson plans & worksheets for grades 3 to 5
Tags : Teaching grades pre k to 5

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Fractured fairy tales are a great way to add fun to your classroom reading curriculum. You have now spent over a week (see the series below) on this fun reading unit addressing story elements, comparing and contrasting, cooperative learning, and much more. You have read many great examples of classic fairy tales and fractured fairy tales. Now is a great time to make the fun cross-curricular! The students should now have a solid understanding of fractured fairy tales, so you can now move to a writing activity! Let the fractured fairy tale writing fun begin!

Materials

Loose leaf paper
Construction paper
Blank, white copy paper
Pencils
Pen
Crayons or markers
Staples and stapler OR hole punch and brads
Scoring rubric

Directions

Begin by reviewing with the students. Ask them questions about the characteristics of a fractured fairy tale. Make sure that all of the students have a clear view of fractured fairy tales. Explain to the students that now that they know so much about fractured fairy tales, they will be writing their own. It is very important to take the time at this point to explain your expectations. Some possible items you may want to address and base their grade on may include:

Proper capitalization and punctuation
Spelling
Character development
Story development
Fractured element of famous fairy tale
Illustrations
Originality
Organization and neatness

Once your expectations have been made clear, give each student a copy of the scoring rubric you will be using to grade their stories. This will allow students to see exactly what they will be graded on as they work on their stories.

The first step in the writing process will be finding their topic. There are several ways you can handle this. One possibility is to let each student choose their own fairy tale that they want to “fracture” and write about. This is the easiest way to handle it, but it can lead to a large amount of similar stories. Another option, is to let the students choose their fairy tale one at a time, allowing no repeats as students continue to pick. The struggle here can be coming up with 20+ classic fairy tales to fracture. Finally, you can have the fairy tales picked out ahead of time and draw names. This will also allow you to repeat a fairy tale a minimum amount of times. It is up to the individual teacher how they would like to handle this. Some possible fairy tales the students could use include:

The Three Pigs
The Three Bears
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Cinderella
Snow White
Sleeping Beauty
Little Red Riding Hood
The Gingerbread Man
Hansel and Gretel
Alice in Wonderland
The Wizard of Oz
Rapunzel
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Beauty and the Beast
The Boy who Cried Wolf
The Ugly Duckling
The Princess and the Pea
The Prince and the Pauper
Jack and the Beanstalk
Pinocchio
The Little Mermaid
Peter Pan
Rumpelstiltskin

Now the students can begin their rough drafts. Ask the students to use pencil to write their drafts and skip lines to allow room for editing later on. The students should write out their whole story, but they do not need to draw pictures. This step will take the students several days to finish. You may want to allow students to take the story home to work on it if they are falling behind. Depending on the length and detail of the story, you may want to allow five to ten days for them to complete their drafts.

Once the students have written their draft, have them go back and edit. They will look for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors, as well as adding, removing, and rearranging their story to make it as fluid as possible. After checking their own work, you may either want them to have a peer edit their story or you may ask the students to turn in their stories for teacher editing and conferencing with the teacher.

After all editing is finished, the students may begin their final copy. First, the students will need blank, white copy paper and two pieces of construction paper (color of their choice). The student will use the construction paper as their front and back cover. The copy paper will allow for the students to do their writing and draw pictures without lines through them. It is up to each teacher how many pictures they will require their students to have in their story. One per page may be too time-consuming. Three to four for the entire story is recommended. The student will write their final copy in blue or black ink, and their pictures must be in color. Once the story is finished, the students should bind their book with either staples on brads down the side. Overall, this project should take two to three weeks to finish. You can cut down the time by assigning work on it for homework.

Although this project takes a great deal of time, it is a quality project for a large part of their writing grade. It requires the students to use the entire writing process while focusing on grammar. Writing fractured fairy tales is also a fun project that allows your students to express their creativity and enjoy writing!

This post is part of the series: A Unit on Fractured Fairy Tales

This fractured fairy tale unit will make reading fun in elementary and middle school classrooms everywhere. By introducing fractured fairy tales, focusing on story elements, comparing and contrasting, and many fun projects, students will develop a new love for reading!