This Lesson's Title:

Fairy Tales in New Settings

fracturing fairy tales by moving their times and places

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Kathleen Marshall at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Bubba, the Cowboy Prince by Helen Ketteman. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out Bubba, The Cowboy Prince at Amazon.com.

Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

The writer will first choose a fairy tale that he/she is very familiar with.  Next, he/she will choose a completely different setting (time and place) for their story.  The writer will then fracture the fairy tale by telling an interesting new story that uses the same basic plot elements, but different character and setting details. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; the writer's goal is to create a new and believable setting (time and place) with memorable details for a fairy tale that is already known.  The support trait in this assignment is organization; the writer will organize the sequence of events of their story using the familiar tale as a model and adding details appropriate to their new setting.

Recipient of the NNWP's
Excellent Writing Lesson Award:

Because of the quality of its resources and ideas, this WritingFix lesson was selected by the Northern Nevada Writing Project as July 2007's Writing Lesson of the Month. It was e-mailed to thousands of teachers who are members of the NNWP's Writing Lesson of the Month Teacher Network.

To quickly access all the WritingFix lessons that have been chosen as "Lesson of the Month," click here to visit the NNWP's archive. You can have a link to a high-quality writing lesson sent to you every month.