This Lesson's Title:

Serendipitous Fairy Tale Tabloids

imitating a newspaper's voice with a funny and original idea

This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. Check out all of Corbett's on-line lessons by clicking here.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Fairytale News by Colin and Jacqui Hawkins. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this books' authors.

Check out Fairytale News at Amazon.com.

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

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

After enjoying Colin and Jaqui Hawkins' story of Fairytale Land's newspaper, pose this question to students: "If they have a newspaper, do you think they have a tabloid newspaper too?" After examining articles from tabloid newspapers, students create crazy, tabloid-worthy headline for Fairytale Land. Using the style of a tabloid's articles, students will create an entire article that might run in the Fairytale Enquirer. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is voice; the writer's goal is to authentically imitate the style (and voice) of a real type of writing that can be found in the world.  The support trait in this assignment is idea development ; students should be encouraged to be as original as possible (no Shrek rip-offs!) as they write this assignment.

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 August 2008'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.