Week 3-- What is a Fable?

I finally got to head back to Mrs. Kawakami's class today. They've been out of school for the last month (they have year-round school). So the kids were pretty excited to see me and I was glad to be there again!

Since we had such a long break since I had visited their class last, I reviewed with the kids what fairy tales and folk tales were. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they remembered almost everything we had talked about!

We then did a game I called "Fairy Freeze." I didn't think I would need my wand for this, but wouldn't you know it, those kids asked where my wand was! Ha! This was an exercise where I would call out animal movements like "waddle like a penguin," "soar like an eagle," "scurry like a mouse" or "sleep like a lion!" They loved it and all of them got so into it by making noises and everything!

I wanted to get them moving with this activity and also give them an intro into talking about the animals in our story, a lion and a mouse.

From here, we came back to the rug and I pulled out my lion and mouse puppets. I asked Mrs. Kawakami to choose 2 people who had been great students that day that got to come up and help me. One student got to be the mouse and the other got to be the lion. I then passed out some string for 5 students to be the "hunters" in the story. I told the story and helped the kids with the puppets tell the story by telling them to make the noises at the right time, and make the puppets do what they need to in the story, etc.

At one point during the story, the lion roars for help when he's been caught by the hunters, so at this part, I told the boy who was playing the part to roar like the lion. His roar was small and quiet and the class giggled. So I said "I think you can do a better roar than that!" And I was right! He gave me a great roar and the rest of the class was so thrilled!

We then talked about the elements of fables and I asked them what the moral of the story of the lion and the mouse was.

From here, I split them into 3 groups by having them do a toe-to-toe exercise and I gave them each a poster where I explained to them that they were going to write everything they knew about fairy tales/folk tales/fables (depending on which poster they got). They could write or draw anything to do about the genre they got.

The writing on the posters part turned out fine, although it seemed as though I learned that I needed to give more instruction about what a fable is because the fable group had a hard time coming up with things to write on their poster.

Once they were done with that, they were to come up with a story that fit in their genre to perform for the class. This was a pre-assessment for me to see how well they performed in front of their peers.

The performances were fantastic though and I was impressed with the kids' enthusiasm and creativity. One boy was cast in the fairy tale group's version of Cinderella as the Fairy Godmother! He surprised us with a stunning British accent and hilarious conversation with Cinderella about her purse.

The British Fairy Godmother and Cinderella

The other two groups chose "The Three Little Pigs"and "The Tortoise and the Hare."

...and the tortoise WINS!

Overall, the activity was a bit crazy in the rehearsal phase. Next time, I would change it so there are only two groups that perform or talk to Mrs. Kawakami beforehand and see if we can split our time between 3 groups. I think we both relied on Becky because she was there, but it would've been a bit hectic without her.

We finished by talking about the differences between the 3 genres and the elements we saw in each performance. When we talked about each one, I displayed the corresponding poster on the board and I think that helped solidify the differences in the kids minds.

It was sure an eventful class!