Fairy Tales - A Literary Genre

Do you want an intriguing way to get your students to read and analyze literature for plot development and characterization — try Fairy Tales! These stories are fun, fascinating and full of heroes and heroines, magical creatures, and fights between good and evil. And they’re short! Your teenage students will find this an entertaining way to study literature and practice their skills in analysis, discussion, and writing. Included in this unit is an 80-page teacher’s manual that discusses the definitions, history, motifs and tropes of fairy tales. Two dozen representative fairy tales have been classified into seven motifs with discussions of how they fit a motif and how they have unusual twists that make them unique to the genre. Also included are four slide shows that illustrate the definitions, motifs, tropes, and well known authors of fairy tales that will give your students a visual focus for discussion and aid them in taking notes. The unit can be used entirely for class discussion, or you may use the accompanying written assignment on motifs and a quiz on tropes, along with answer guides. Also included are class polls on favorite fairy tales, and handouts on hyperlinks for the 24 fairy tales. All documents are available as PDFs and slideshows are formatted in both Apple’s Keynote and Microsoft’s Powerpoint.