Elementary Writing: Telling Tales provides a gentle and flexible framework to open children's minds to an examination of literature and to offer them age-appropriate opportunities to write. Class readings and activities plant the seeds of literary analysis and critical thinking by engaging in thoughtful appreciation of the elements at play in myths and legends. Young children partner with adults at home to experience a heightened enjoyment of literature that comes from pausing to reflect, examine, and play with ideas and words.
Children embody age-appropriate analysis with activities such as word play, oral storytelling, storyboarding, reader’s theater, twisted tale telling, and character collage. Students read and re-read favorite tales for comprehension and application of learned elements to their own writing.
Syllabus
Week One
Readings establish the varying cultural basis of myths and legends from around the world while noting that traditional stories are bound by common patterns, plotlines, and literary devices. Activities include oral retelling, word play, and storyboarding.
Week Two
This week focuses on the device of hyperbole as students investigate humor in the stories read this week. They build their own exaggeration skills by playing improv games that call on them to go big as they craft stories on the spot.
Week Three
Changing a setting for traditional tales calls upon students to have deep understanding of the original story and characters that inhabit it. They’ll call upon that knowledge base as they cast beloved characters into a modern locale or situation.
Week Four
In the last week, children take knowledge of the essence of myths and legends (themes, setting, plot devices) as well as specific characters and events and use that know-how to create a “twisted” scene or story.
Common Core and Academic Standards Support
What follows is a word bank and set of skills associated with this class. Use them to craft your own learning narrative for use in year-end evaluations, charter school reports, or any other accountability source.
Word Bank
- Character development
- Hyperbole
- Improvisation
- Oral language
- Plot
- Recitation
- Self-expression
- Sequencing
- Setting
- Story arc
- Theme
- Vocabulary development
- Writing craft
- Written and visual narrative
- Writing voice
Core Skills
- Analyze structure of text
- Cite textual evidence to support conclusions
- Compare and contrast story variants
- Connect the written story to oral performance
- Determine central ideas and themes
- Engage in oral storytelling
- Identify patterns
- Identify point of view
- Interpret and retell in own voice
- Read diverse sources
- Study narrative arc: action, background, development, climax, resolution
- Summarize key supporting details
- Write detailed, organized, structured original narratives
- Write variations on established stories
