Cowboys and Castles: Interacting With Fractured Texas Tales
Interacting with and responding to texts is an important foundation to build in the primary grades and is a great way to encourage the language development of English-language learners (ELLs). Invite students to explore five different ways to respond to text as they listen to two traditional fairy tales and their Wild West versions. Students engage with the text by talking back to characters in Cinderella, dramatizing events in Bubba the Cowboy Prince, inserting themselves into the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and critiquing and controlling story elements in Little Red Cowboy Hat. After comparing and contrasting Little Red Riding Hood and Little Red Cowboy Hat, students plan and create an original fractured tale.
This unit has five lessons for practice analysis by listening to different versions of the same story and reacting to, comparing, and interacting with them. Students will develop reading comprehension skills, literary appreciation, and enthusiasm for reading by engaging in expressive and performative reading responses, which include dramatizing, talking back, critiquing/controlling, inserting, and taking over. They will practice writing their responses to a story by recording what they would say to characters in books they have heard read aloud and explore story conventions such as beginning, middle, and end; character development; setting; and plot by using an online tool to record their changes to a familiar story. These lesson will help students develop the skill of identifying who is telling the story.
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