Folktales and Fairy Tales

Second graders at my current school do a writing unit near the beginning of the year which focuses on fairy tales. In their homeroom classes they discuss the different attributes of a fairy tale and then go through the writing process as their create their own.

For the library collaboration with this unit I focus on folktales. We discuss what a folktale is, read a few examples, and then do a Seesaw activity where we check our understanding of the differences between folktales and fairy tales.

The books that I use for these lessons are:

Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest by Gerald McDermott

Anansi Does the Impossible! An Ashanti Tale by Verna Aardema

The Mitten (a Ukranian Folktale) by Jan Brett

When I read Raven I also like to weave in a bit of the history of storytelling. I gather the kids in a circle around the carpet, turn the lights off, and make a "fire" in the center of the circle with sticks and bits of colored tissue paper. I turn on a flashlight and put it underneath the tissue paper to simulate a campfire and I tell the students that this is how stories were told for many thousands of years before there were books. We talk about oral storytelling and the idea of stories through multiple generations.

For our summative assessment and final activity of the unit I have the students complete an activity on Seesaw: