Children hear and read fairy tales at a young age. When they reach late elementary and junior high school age, they can explore and discover inconsistencies in fairy tales i.e. Goldilocks breaks into the Bears’ house and vandalizes it. Here is a creative writing activity in the form of a parody.
This is the most popular creative writing activity in our junior high class. This plan has worked well for me as a junior high teacher, but I think could be used with upper elementary students. I think it can be modified and meet the needs of younger and older students.
We use Jon Sczieska’s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf as a model of a parody.
The unit plan includes:
Process
Reading the story to the class and brainstorm differences between the original and this version? Most students are familiar with the original story of The Three Little Pigs, but have it on hand if someone is unfamiliar with the story.
What fairy tales are students familiar with? Brainstorm and create a list. What parodies of fairy tales are they familiar with? Have they seen Shrek? What makes Shrek different from other fairy tales? Students may recognize Shrek as a parody of the genre and has features and structure of a fairy tale while it spoofs the genre in various ways.
What twists can be used to rewrite a fairy tale i.e roles of antagonist and protagonists or plot events? Some examples students have shared include what if the third little pig refused his siblings refuge to teach them a lesson where would they stay? Could the pigs organize a pig posse to run the wolf out-of-town? Would they have become ‘ham jam’? What about the story from the wolf’s perspective? What if the wolf were a vegan?
What other fairy tales are students familiar with? Brainstorm and make a list. This helps students choose a fairy tale to rewrite. Choose a familiar fairy tale and brainstorm ways to ‘fracture.’ We have used Cinderella. The list can offer starters for students and could also be used in the parody of another fairy tales. What if…
- Cinderella has beautiful step sisters?
- The prince cannot dance?
- Cinderella is a homebody who likes to cook, sew, and clean and is not interested in attending the ball?
- The magic wand is defective and does not get the spell right?
- Cinderella does not want to get married?
- Cinderella wants a car and not a carriage?
- Etc…
Brainstorm elements fairy tales share and create a graphic organizer to hand out. Some features have included:
- Once upon a time…
- Good vs. evil
- Beautiful heroine and handsome prince
- Magic/supernatural
- Personification
- …live happily ever after
- Etc…
Students can ‘fracture’ a fairy tale and change stories in unexpected, clever, and humourous ways by altering characters, modifying language, using a modern context, etc. The fairy tales still remain true to their original forms despite changes.
Here are sites to find fairy tales or refresh memories about the fairy tales students choose: Story Nory, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Ivy Joy. Some sites include other genres i.e. fables. Stick to fairy tales as they are well-suited for this project.
Students include an outline or web and a rough draft. Peers or teachers can proofread the story so students can edit.
Final Product
A picture book format is popular. The authors of the picture book can read to their stories to younger students.
Words of caution
- This is not a yearlong project
- Students need to choose something of a manageable length.
- Usually the audience is younger. Students should use appropriate language and images, keep the book short i.e 20 pages, and use large font.
Assessment
I use this activity to assess creative writing, sharing orally, and finding appropriate images for the story and the audience. As well, there are brainstorming, proofreading, and editing.
Questions
What engaging writing activities do other teachers use in their classrooms? What changes can be used for older and younger students? What other assessment purposes can you think of for this type of activity?
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
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Reblogged this on lost creek publishing and commented:
🙂
A very nice technique…I like the suggestions that ignite the creative process!
The students look forward to this one every year. They sometimes take the one from a previous year and do an overhaul.
How wonderful that the students appreciate the lessons! I’m sure they love their teacher!
Most days they do. These students are really into the creative so when I let them run with an activity like this or art it is so quiet in the room.
Wonderful-I used to use this unit too! However, when I taught the K-2’s I found quite a few of them did not have the background of the original story. We had to read the original, internalize it and then go on.
It is interesting that this is a unit for younger children. I have wondered if their lack of background with the stories did not create a problem. It sounds like you adapted the plan to meet that need. Thank you for the comment Sarah.
Thanks for the wonderful links Ivon. Those sites are awesome! 🙂
You are welcome Elizabeth. I am glad you found them useful.
Oh how I love to be your student. I enjoy creative writing in many forms. When I was in a creative writing poetry challenge with just 5 mins given, I didn’t write anything on my own. Instead I combined two poems with two lines from each poem alternately, it was like a person questioning and another person answering them. The staff appreciated me ’cause I was fidgeting with tension and anxiety when my name was called out.
That sounds like an interesting idea for students. Many junior high students are unsure about what to create and giving them something like what you did would help overcome some of that.
Awesome post! Thanks… 🙂 Bette
Thank you Bette and you are welcome.
Ivon,
I KNOW you will not want to miss my post this coming Monday 20th May, it will illustrate a Teachers role and impact as a transformer VERY well indeed …. 🙂
I look forward to it.
I look forward to posting it Ivon 🙂
My special post is now live Icon 🙂
Don’t you just hate it when autocorrect decides to change something after you press POST COMMENT or SEND?
I said IVON, it said Icon 🙂
I know. I hate that too and it does not underline it for us.
This sounds fantastic – I love this.
You’ve brought me recall of a Hans Christen Anderson book my sister had in childhood, and being a hoarder, still has. She has swap cards we had in the orphanage!!
That book though, I absolutely pored over. It had wonderful drawings. And oh, The Little Match Girl and The Red Shoes, I adored. Adored.
You’re a great teacher, I reckon.
Thank you Noeleen for the kind words and the beautiful story.
I am a former teacher, most recently a college instructor in developmental reading and English. This is a fabulous activity! I wish I’d known about it before I retired.
The students love it every year. They get to add onto previous stories or start from scratch on a new one.
Observant analysis
Thank you Jay.
Hi ! Thanks for the like on my blog ” Native American Indian Pottery” From the comments on your post you are a well like teacher. I am not a teacher but when in England I was invited to schools and museums to talk about Roman pottery to the l2 year age. The feed back from them was fantastic. From then on I knew how it felt to be a teacher and appreciated them more than I did when at school myself. Thank you for visiting my blog.
You are welcome Rita. Thank you for stopping and leaving the lovely comment. I think we are all teachers in some way. Art is a form of teaching that I think is immeasurable and it brings such delight to the world.
Reblogged this on Reason & Existenz and commented:
Great exercise!
Keith, thank you for the re-blog.
Most Surely! 🙂
Your blog reminds me of Frank McCourt’s approach to creative writing based on the student excuses found in a teacher’s desk. Most of the were quite fanciful. He set the kids to developing better and better excuses for missing class, tardiness, etc.
My high school had a wonderful English teacher. His approach to poetry was to start with Limericks. He’d recite a few. the kids would laugh and then he’s invite them to write a better Limerick. Before anyone noticed he’d escalate into more serious poetry. the kids (all boys) actually liked it. You are an inspiration!
Glad you liked the pictures from QC. I have several older blogs on Halifax that might interest you, along with book reviews. Nation is considered a young adult book.
God Bless,
Don
Thank you for the wonderful comment Don. Your picture of Quebec City reminded me of our trips there. I am looking forward to visiting the Maritimes, at least Nova Scotia, next summer.
Thank you and happy adventures as you pass the torch of literacy and travel to the Maritime Provinces.
God Bless,
Don
Thank you for visiting and liking my blog. Love this entry of yours and will share it with my daughter who is about to embark on a career of teaching languages. She’ll love it.
I am glad you are able to pass it along. It is a lot of fun and it can be modified to meet age ranges.
Just shared on FB & Twitter. THANKS, again!
Thank you. This is appreciated.
I wanted to say thank you for re-posting my poem You Were Talking About Bliss. I really do consider that at the high end of compliments that someone would want to share one of my poems with theuir readers and their site space. Thank you again. />KB
It spoke quite clearly to me this morning about where I am at in life and where I was at this past weekend. You are welcome and thank you for a lovely poem.
Sir, you have a great blog, I will catch as many of your posts as I have the time to. Thank you for the work you do, not just on this blog but also in your teaching and for learning more skills at the university. You do sound like an interesting person, I am looking forward to your posts.
ted
Thank you for the wonderful comment Ted.
Oh!! I love this story….told from the Wolf’s point of view. Yes! He was framed and so misunderstood. If I remember correctly, he just wanted a cup of sugar and it was the pigs who overreacted? It wasn’t his fault that he kept sneezing that day, and he really did not intend to blow their houses down..
There’s another one that I love (I forgot the name of the book). It’s about what happened AFTER the princess kissed the frog and he turned into a prince. She married him, but deep inside he was still a frog. She finally realized how unhappy he was being a human….when she came into a room and found him jumping on the furniture….and licking their lily pad wall paper. Haha!
Wonderful creativity!
Thank you Mary. I used Shrek as the prototype. Most students had seen one of the series and it helped them write the parody. As well, it was designed to look at the world through a different, unexpected perspective.
This is one of my favorite books that we own for my daughter! I actually think this is a great activity for older students as well. I teach Communication Studies and these are fun activities to get students thinking about perspective, miscommunication and the importance of considering audience in message creation. I haven’t used it in a while, but will definitely be pinning this to my idea board for teaching. Right now I’m teaching Argumentation and Debate and this could be a good way of presenting the idea of “two sides (or more) to every story/argument”. 🙂 Thanks for the reminder!
It would definitely fit into that type of context. I have seen similar lesson plans used from Grade 2 and up with this concept so I think you are absolutely right that it can be done with children/students at a variety of ages with modifications.
Taught 33 years Miami Dade minority inner city schools high school history. Except for college bound most 2-5 years below grade level so mandated special writing and reading assignments in lessons plans to document lessons. (What do they think social studies teachers do all day in the class anyway?). One lesson I used was to take a pic from a mag of some event, post on board and had kids write just 3 paragraphs: what is going on, how did it come about, how will it end. Then during the course of the week I would call up 8 a day for one on one edit and then rewrite assignment. Probably the most productive thing I ever did. Most teachers taught the standard lessons the standard way with standards tests and naturally half the kids failed. I always tried to design something a kid could do to earn a C especially art/history projects. Saw no sense in failing everyone as underachievers.
Thank you for a great comment and insight into what can happen in classrooms. Students thrive on things that connect with them in their learning and, more importantly, people who connect with them. The one-on-one time from a caring adult might have been the only time they had an adult pay attention to something they did.
I used to lecture on Fairy Tales (to adults, businesses, etc.). Under STORY POEMS, on my blog, you can see a couple of the shorter tales. Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, etc. Just in case you’re interested. The stories are for all ages. I self-published a book, BLACK CAT TALES, so that people could have the stories, if they wanted them. I just took them to lectures with me.
These look very interesting. My students loved re-writing the fairy tales and looked forward to this activity each year. Fairy tales are something most people can connect to.
WONDERFUL post. Thank you.
Thank you Ann.
o super. Just super duper. Right down my wooded lane, and off into the forest. I recently finished (last week) a 3K revisiting Cinderelly, and have since outlined a fun, second approach. I like the term fractured fairy tales! That sounds officially “right”…for these slightly off bits.
Is it? Is it a coin of your own…
A lot of fun. Any way you look through this Once Upon’a…
No, I did not coin the term. I modified a Grade 2 activity for junior high school students and used materials a colleague provided to make it work. Students looked forward to it each year and quite often modified previous writing from the year before.
Brilliant.
Thank you. I must confess it was not my idea initially. I modified an activity another teacher used, but the students loved it and would ask about it at the beginning of the year. Returning students had the upper hand as they would use previous year’s learning as a foundation.
You are Welcome! As long as the thought is provoked and boundaries get moved around or removed completely I believe it’s excessively important. I am every grateful to my 11th grade teacher for allowing me freedom after years of being a slave to format. Making the decision to include such an exercise, to me, is brilliant.
Your second last sentence is intriguing. My dissertation topic is about pedagogy that includes the lived experiences of the learners, including the teacher, in the classrooms. We each bring an autobiography to learning which includes our personal curriculum.
I feel that it was very humanizing and the curriculum because instantly more relevant since I was permitted to relate to it in any which way I saw fit. I also retained the skills which were being emphasized and did not feel uncomfortable with my own ability and desire to grow as a student in turn. It was a turning point because I started to become self motivated at that point and stopped performing out of fear of failure. I developed a better sense of self.
How creative & fun!!
Thank you Cindy. It was always a lot of fun to do with the kids. It was something they looked forward to each year.
“Loved” to read this story to young ones as it presents another point of view and always generates meaningful discussion. How fortunate your students are to have such an informed and creative teacher!
Best!
Thank you Grace. I look forward to many visits to your wonderful blog. Take care.
Ivon – thank you for stopping by my blog. I hope we can visit each other often. This is a terrific perspective and sounds like it would be a lot of fun to teach. Makes me think how We act out fairy tales in real life as drama triangles. What a great way for kids and adults to see the roles they might be playing! Thank you for the inspiration.
It is a lot of fun and, as you point out, very revealing. Thank you for the comment and I look forward to many visits.
I did one on the seven dwarfs and their problems. It is in my archives. Give it a read and let me know what you think?
It looks good. Once we got past the presentation of the idea, students could choose the fairy tale they wanted to fracture. I don’t recall them using the seven dwarfs. Popular ones were Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Princess and the Pea.
I could what you have done working quite well for junior high students. I was surprised by how many students were not familiar with fairy tales so this enriched their lives that way.
I did parody on Jack and Beanstalk. Why is the psycho Mr Entitlement played as a children’s roll model? He is a sneaky thief and murderer raised by a greedy mother niether with any conscience . Hey, it was the poor giant that was the victim.
Several of my students used that theme in the fractured fairy tale recount. The giant received a much kinder reception in their stories.
Re: fairy tales – perhaps being simple in their delivery. Children one hundred years ago enjoyed fairy stories without much ado to how they were delivered… I enjoyed fairy tales 40 years ago for the same reason. children in India grow up roughly – pulled around and bullied even but for sure they are happier with their lot than their western counterparts… 😉
eve
I was always surprised how few of my students had a background in fairy tales, so the unit served the purpose of introducing them to a wonderful genre in a fun way. Thank you for an insightful comment Eve.
Most effective and creative approach ! You are a great educator,my friend !!!
Warm regards,
Doda
Thank you for the lovely compliment.
Why I love Terry Pratchett, love all stories from mythology to fairy tales.
Thanks for visiting my site again Ivon, that Walter really is a rascal, he may yet turn up again perhaps in a few months time. Keep up your excellent work. Joe
Thank you Joe.
Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner and commented:
I love the ideas he came up with!
Thank you for the re-blogs. It is greatly appreciated.
I remember a cartoon when I was young that often had fractured fairy tales. They were hilarious. This is such a fun way for your students to explore the changes one simple alteration can make to a story.
They always looked forward to it as I taught the junior high in our small class.
I wish I’d read this post before I retired from teaching writing! However, I had a few really good ways to get students to write (will share if interested).
I miss all the fun and creativity that came from my students’ explorations on paper.
Well, I found out why I wasn’t getting your posts. You were another person who was erased from my Reader. I don’t know how many are gone. This is a wonderful post.
Thank you for finding your way back.
This is so interesting, bit too advanced for my students as they have no exposure to fairy tales at all. However I am working on that! Thanks for stopping by my blog and I will delve into yours for teaching tips as a volunteer just doing her best!!
Actually, this was an activity modified from a Grade 2 activity I found on the Internet. The other thing we did was included younger students and budded them with a junior high mentor.
Great post. thanks for following me and introducing me to this blog. I’m not a teacher but I am on some committees in our school. That experience makes me appreciate teachers who look for ways to reach students. I am also a huge fan of storytelling (I read that post earlier today).
Thank you for following and the comment. Storytelling is the bridges we use to invite people on our journeys.
I love fairy tales and they cover most of the important topics in one way or another (one might agree or not with Freudian interpretations but The Uses of Enchanment has many good points) and I love the scope they have for twists and turns, modernization… It must be a great class
The students always looked forward to it. Several of them used the same fairy tale over the several years they were with me.
Reblogged this on The Blogging Pot and commented:
Some great creative writing ideas here xx Rowena
Thank you for the re-blog and comment Rowena.
Just innovative.
Thank you.
My pleasure sir.
I did Jack and Beanstalk parody on Feb 15, 2011 post.
Ooops, I see above I already said that.
Inspiring post. A teacher is always a learner and a learner is always a student.
They are two sides of the same coin.
Thanks and regards.
My best wishes for a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! With love Maxima
Thank you Maxima. Have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year.
What a great way for a writer to generate story and plot ideas. Thank you for this post. ^_^
You are welcome and thank you for the lovely comment.
So creative! Thank you for sharing!
You are welcome. The students loved and looked forward to it each year. By my last year of teaching, students were using the same fairy tale and worked on them to improve them.
What a wonderfully creative way to get students thinking and writing in a fresh and original way. I bet they all love your classes.
The students always enjoyed it. Because I taught many students for multiple years it became an expected and looked-forward to activity.