This Lesson's Title:

Voicing an Original Fairy Tale Narrator

creating a unique fairy tale based on three little voices and one big bad voice

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

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf at Amazon.com.

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

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

After discussing the power of serving as a story's narrator (inspired by Jon Scieszka's hilarious The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!), students will plan an original fairy tale. They will choose 3 little creatures and 1 big bad creature to serve as their stories' main characters. Carefully selecting one of the four characters to serve as their tale's narrator, they will voice an original fairy tale from that one character's point of view. 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 convey an unusual narrator's voice, shifting perspective and capturing emotion.  The support trait in this assignment is idea development; writers need to create an original fairy tale plot based on the model of the Three Little Pigs, and their goal should be to be as different from the pigs' story as possible.