Literacy and Fairy Tales 2
Working with the topic of fairy tales gives children a starting point that they are familiar with. Even the children that find Literacy difficult will have a head start because they already know the pattern of the stories and what is coming next. Because of this they can have great fun changing the outcome of the fairy tales.
Last week was a real success from the point of view of discussion and learning. I did a lot of the writing for Tiny, because it was more important to get the ideas down. The writing is still a great problem, and we are addressing that through targeted handwriting (short sessions) and through grammar work.
First, we talked about how many Fairy Tales we know.He was very surprised at just how many we wrote down of post-it notes. Once I told him that I would write them down he was more willing to come up with a lot more ideas.
He then picked his favourites and wrote them down in his book. this was difficult for him because he kept changing his mind. It found it hard to explain whay they were his favourites so we moved on.
We talked about what was the same in these stories. We ended up adding more fairy tales.
He loved doing this. It also led to a conversation about the wolf in 'The Three Little Pigs' being the same wolf in 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
We came up with a great collection of words - Talking animals, Princess, castle, wold, woodcutter, house in the woods, witches and giants.
We then made this chart in a Power Point page which he enjoyed doing.
List of fairy tale features
I encouraged him to make a list in his book using bullet points. This gave him a chance to practice his handwriting. (we have started cursive writing and it seems to be helping him form his letters.
Adjectives
This was great fun. He drew the Three Little Pigs at the top of the page and the wolf at the bottom. I wanted to see how independent he could be with this.
I told him that I was going to get dressed, and that I wanted him to think of some words to describe the wold before got back. Tiny has a lot of trouble still working independently. He cannot deep on task, particularly what he thinks the task is going to be too difficult.
When I cam back 10 minutes later, I found him looking at images on Google. He had typed in 'wolf adjectives' and found some posters that gave a lovely list of words for him to use. He had written down two words - fierce and hungry - and he wanted me to write down the rest.
Just goes to prove, there is always a way round a problem.
We added a new page to his Power Point.
Newspaper Report Planning
The last task of the week was to plan for a newspaper report on the Gingerbread Man.
After looking at some newspapers we discussed the layout. We shared the writing (with me doing the majority) until we had come up with a newspaper report in his book.
Now onto this weeks plans
On Monday we worked from our notes and made a newspaper page on Power Point. We saved it as a PDF file and printer it out to stick in his book.
Most of the typing he did himself because he was copying from the notes we made. He made quite a few spelling mistakes - but that gave us an opportunity when he had finished to use spell checker.
Next, we will be looking at commas in a list.
In his book I have written the beginning of the sentence:
In the witches pot there was ______, _________, ________ and __________.
And another sentence the starts :
In the giants pocket there was ...
We will talk about commas being used to separate the items in the sentences.
Then he can draw some of the items... We are going to make these items as gross as possible to make it more fun.
We might draw a giants pocket as a poster if we get the time and add pictures of the things he had in his pocket.
The muddled up Game
You will find some images for this game on the resources page under Muddled up game (fairy tales) or use your own.
https://www.whyplay.co/topics
Cut out some images that include - settings - fairy tale elements - and fairy tale characters - and put them face down on the table.
Talk about a story you could make up with these elements. Talk about the beginning the middle and the end of a story.
Introduce the ideas of the opening of the story is to set the scene. To let the reader of listener know where and when the story is going to take place.
The middle of the story is where something happens. There is a problem that has to be solved.
The end of the story is where the problem is resolved and (in the case of fairy tales) all the good characters live happily ever after.
Play the game again with different pictures. How many different stories can you come up with?
Fairy Tale Openings
Together with will talk about the types of sentences we can use to open the fairy tale story. i.e.
Once upon a time ...
It was a dark night ...
On day ...
Long, long ago ...
In a land far, far away ...
etc.
We will write these up in his book together so that he can then type them into his Power Point presentation.