Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Cinderella Unit - The Research

So it's time for a non-Five for Friday post! Woohoo! I also have a feeling this is going to be divided into two parts since it is quite long... [edit: actually, three now!]

We are in the midst of wrapping up our Cinderella Unit, which started at the beginning of March. This was my first time tackling Cinderella, and I'm actually quite proud of myself for what was accomplished!

Did you know that there are like a bajillion (yes, that is a number in my world!) versions of the Cinderella story out there??? I had no idea!! I had also read somewhere that there is no original version of Cinderella. The Cinderella stories from each culture were not spin-offs or revisions of a particular version, they were actually created by that culture itself! (Hope that made sense.) Not sure if that's really true or not but still pretty cool! The fractured versions don't count, of course.

Anyways, I gathered around 18 versions of Cinderella, including some fractured versions. I put some of the books on display for free reading and kept 13 of them to use in our rotation. 

I told the kids that they were going to "travel the world" and read different Cinderella stories from different cultures and countries. But they weren't just reading for fun. They are actually researching these stories because when they are done, the will be writing their own version!

I created a workbook using a combination of the following two resources from TpT:
    


The kids worked in pairs (with their desk partners) on their "research". Every day they would get one Cinderella story to read. While they were reading they would fill out the story elements page for their story.


They would also fill out the corresponding passport and note down some cultural differences. I printed out a sheet with all the flags on it and put it on display using our document camera so that the kids had access to the flags.


When they were done reading the book, they worked together to complete the compare and contrast chart at the back of their workbook. 



This activity took around 2.5 weeks since we had 13 books to go through, but the students were all very engaged!






After our research was done, it was time to start thinking about our own Cinderella stories! Click here to read part two, story planning!


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