Artifact #1

Educators implement effective practices in areas of planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting.

B.C. Standard #5

During my practicum I developed and executed a Fairytale unit. I was extremely lucky to have the support of my TM who shared a number of different resources with me. She gave me an entire tub of resources that I spent time going through and creating my unit plan. For my original plan I decided on four fairytales, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel, The Princess and the Pea, and Cinderella. I ended up reading a few more along the way however.

I started off by teaching the students the basics of what makes a fairytale. For example, they usually start with "Once upon a time" and end with "happily ever after". Each student started a new section in their binders which included a checklist that we filled out after we read a new story to determine if it was a fairytale. It was a lot of fun to both plan and execute.

We did a number of activities around basic fairytales such as sequencing where they had to arrange pictures in the correct order that the story went in. We learned about beginning, middle and end by drawing the story in it's parts as I read it to them. We then learned about setting, characters, problem and solution. They also wrote letters to Cinderella or the Stepsisters (their choice).

With each fairytale I read I also read a fractured version. We talked about the fractured tales and how they were different from the originals. We also did a couple of Venn Diagrams, one as a class, and one they did on their own with help from their peers.

All of these activities were preparing them for eventually writing their own fairytale. I did not carry out this lesson, as this is where I passed off to my TM. Before doing so I reviewed their work to assess it and determine if they understood all the steps that would be required to write a story on their own. My TM and I discusses the work I had done so she was aware of what still needed to be done or refreshed before they moved into their writing. Some of the students are much stronger writers than others but for the most part all the students had a good imagination and were capable of creating their own story, even if it needed to be partially scribed for them.