Courses: Public Speaking, Storytelling, Performance Ethnography, Oral Interpretation, Language and Communication. Objectives: The aims of this class exercise are: (1) To engage in a collaborative creative process of developing a story/topic from a simple idea to deepening the relationship with the audience through vivid and evocative language; (2)…

This article describes activities in which students deepen their relational understanding of the equals sign through exploring inequalities in a competitive dice game, built around the familiar fairy-tale "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Big Bad Wolf." The activity can be adapted to different abilities by choosing more or less…

Purpose: This paper, which originates in an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom activity in Hong Kong, aims to explore English learners' expressive and creative potential in writing by studying their work in the literary narrative genre. Design/methodology/approach: A group of upper secondary students (15-16 years of age) with limited…

The genre of tall tales is characterized by fictional, often intentionally ridiculous, stories that provide a reason for or origin of a natural phenomenon. Tall tales are often based on characters who are unusually adept or powerful; they are particularly appealing to children who are cognitively capable of understanding the tongue-in-cheek humor…

Since ancient times, humans have sought explanations for the mysteries of nature's beauty and variety. Like other kinds of folk stories, pourquoi tales can be considered parables about how humans and animals originated or why they look or behave the way they do. Pourquoi tales have high appeal, are generally simple and straightforward in…

Children's literature often inspires the author's lessons, and reading to her primary students motivates their participation. In this article, the author presents and describes her lesson which is based on the book "Falling for Rapunzel" by Leah Wilcox. Students created a fairy tale tower in this lesson, which took place over three class periods.…

Shows how writing news stories about fairy tale characters enlivens student writing classes. Suggests assignments for creating a fairy tale newspaper with news stories, obituaries, editorials and letters to the editor, advice columns ("Ask Mother Goose"), weddings and social events, sports news, and advertisements. (RL)

Discusses the use of fairy tales in intermediate and advanced French courses as source material for discussion of French cultural values and traditional behavior patterns. Methods of analyzing values in a fairy tale and implementation in the classroom are discussed using "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" as an example. (AMH)

Describes a project in which students write their own notes, postcards, and invitations from storybook characters to other book characters. (SR)

Intended to help young children learn to read with comprehension, this book uses visualization and drawing techniques with folktales. The folktales in the book (collected from around the world and freely adapted) were chosen to help primary- and middle-grade students increase their enjoyment and comprehension by eliciting a flood of rich visual…

Making repeated use of a traditional tale can offer various kinds of language practice. Many new teachers use a reading passage just once, investing considerable time in the explanation of the vocabulary needed to understand it, and then rush on to something new. Actually, the best potentialities of the material are still to be tapped, through…