Recalling and reframing a personal life story in the form of a fairy tale, then engaging in a practice on meditation and reflecting on it, is one way older adults can relieve their positive experience and thereby impact their mental and emotional health and well-being. Although prior research has established the benefits of narrative therapy (NT)…

The present study investigated externalizing and internalizing behaviours in Greek (n = 599), Russian (n = 596), Indian (n = 571), and Chinese (n = 376) 7- to 12-year-old children. The Fairy Tale Test was used to measure impulsive and motivated aggression, fear of aggression, anxiety, and depression. The results indicated culture-specific patterns…

Background: This study investigates children's ability to generate inferences from narratives containing counterfactual information. Methods: 39 typically developing readers (mean age 10; 05) completed an on-line task in which they were asked to read short passages, followed by sentences which they had to judge as true or false. The sentences…

This article investigates the potential benefits of using children's literature in adult second language (L2) classrooms. A short-term, intensive university course for English reading and writing was designed incorporating children's literature into the curriculum. The author describes the course and discusses how children's literature can be used…

Writing and literacy development are crucial for the academic and social success of new language learners in the primary grades. Over the last 25 years, several terms have been used to describe the talents and needs of children learning new languages in early childhood settings. The term that the author prefers, and which he uses in this article,…

This article discusses how to design an opera on the internet and introduces a site that offers the educational keys to the musical kingdom when it comes to unlocking a child's interest in opera. The combination of attractive, animated artwork, fun interactivity, and sound musical learning make this site very useful in a general music classroom.…

This article explores the relevance of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" to environmental education and contemporary concerns about social and environmental injustices. It presents an account of the relationship between Tolkien's environmental biography and those aspects of the story that highlight the connection between his personal…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Hispanic ESL/literacy learners used their socio-historical experiences and multimodal resources to mediate interpretation and representation of "Cinderella". Eighteen third-grade pupils "read" the video and re-created their understandings in pictures and sentences. The findings suggest that (a)…

Children nowadays perceive fairy tales from a number of sources; however, the strongest prior impressions toward this genre held by most youngsters are still built on the popular mass media-based adaptations such as the animated films or books of fairytale retellings by the Walt Disney Company. In order to make a change to such an undesirable…

This article considers Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" as a text which utilises key codes and conventions of children's literature as a means of encountering the trauma of Fascism. The article begins by placing "Pan's Labyrinth" at a contextual crossroads involving fairy tale and a Spanish cinematic tradition and…

School reform initiatives designed to improve school quality require strong leadership, strategic planning, data analysis, and systemized performance accountability. Utilizing school reforms includes rethinking curriculum and instruction to improve quality and promote equality, restructuring school operations with a focus on both the students and…

Training in the Fairy Tale model of trauma-informed treatment was provided to clinical and direct care staff working with 53 youth in a residential treatment facility. Compared to the year prior to training, in the year of the training the average improvement in presenting problems was increased by 34%, time to discharge was reduced by 39%, and…

"The Castle in the Classroom" describes a year in a kindergarten classroom as the children embark on literary exploration. Each child approaches the journey from a different perspective--some are self-sufficient, others more hesitant; some are literary adventurers, others shyly reluctant. The detailed focus lessons throughout the book…

This article dares to suggest that the use of fairy tales as a pedagogical tool for children in and out of classrooms is and always will be about uplifting the human spirit: a way to survive; a pathway toward hope, especially for vulnerable children suffering from the trauma of war. (Contains 1 note.)

Research has shown that the use of pre-reading activities, such as graphic or advance organizers can positively affect student acquisition of vocabulary and meaning when reading new concepts presented in text. One particularly effective strategy, semantic mapping, can significantly impact students who previously had a lack of prior knowledge on…