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Cinderella Stories

Cinderella stories are exciting teaching tools for students of all ages. Cultural literacy is attainable even for the youngest student when variants of Cinderella are used as read aloud stories!

The story of Cinderella is captivating.

The first known account of this fairy tale is from ancient China.

The history of Cinderella shows that it actually started as a folktale.

In the first writing by Tuan Ch'eng in the 9th century A.D., it had all the elements of classic Chinese folktales, including a magical fish who help Yeh-Shen.

It is certainly nicer than the Brothers Grimm version that followed. In that one the evil stepsisters had their eyes poked out as retribution for their treatment of Ash Girl!

Cinderella Versions

Many variants of Cinderella stories exist. What makes them fascinating to use in any classroom is how they provide opportunities for culture study, geography, text interaction, social issues - all very deep topics for young students.

Cinderella stories make all of those accessible, but of course it is up to the teacher to make it happen.

I always do a fairy tale unit with my primary students. You can get the free download at Primary Education Oasis Teaching Resources.

After this unit (which prepares them extremely well for understanding how a fairy tale is written, what the elements are in different tales, and exposes them to cultural variations of the same fairytale), they are ready for...

Finding Cinderella.

Finding Cinderella

This will be one of the best units you teach all year!

When I started this with my class, they absolutely could not wait to get their hands on the different fairy tale versions of Cinderella!

Even the boys loved this. Just make sure to read aloud "manly versions" of the fairy tale where really bad things happen to the evil step-sisters!

What will you find in the unit?

My lesson protocol for teaching the Cinderella unit

11 different Cinderella versions are used (I recommend purchasing your own copies or get them from the library if they have them all!). Since they are not MY stories, I can't publish them in the ebook, so I have included links to Amazon.com for you to order them if you like. Use one or two per day as a read-aloud, and they are always available for the students to pre-read or re-read at their leisure.

With each read aloud, choose 4-5 words to focus on for each story. The words may be cultural for building background knowledge, multi-syllabic words for phonics and word play, or Tier 2 vocabulary words that are critical for enriching their literacy skills.

each student uses their own Finding Cinderella passport to analyze story elements. This was designed by me, you get full rights to use it, and the students love it. They draw their pictures and respond to the story in a simple, yet meaningful, way.

Work on map skills by creating a map key and labeling where each of the variants of Cinderella came from.

This project and Reading Karate are always my students favorite literacy activities every year.

Get ready for Finding Cinderella!

$17.00 USD

This is an instant download ebook - it is not available in hard copy. Your download link will come to you from EJunkie, where ebooks are kept safe and secure on the web!

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