Fables, Folktales, Myths and Legends-Fun With Projects

My students absolutely enjoy writing projects. So when we studied traditional literature from different cultures this year, I decided to finish our unit with a project. Here's what we did:

1. Students worked in groups of 2-4 to create a chart on their posters including characters, setting, plot, theme and the type of story they wrote.

2. They collaborated and wrote  a fable, folktale, myth or a legend ( typing it was an option). 

3. Students created an illustration and practiced presenting their work to the class.

4. They presented their projects and classmates guessed the theme as well as explained why the theme they chose fits the story. Classmates pointed out 2 positives about the presentation and 1 thing the group can improve next time.

5. Students rotated in groups through each poster and created 3 questions that would go along with that project. They used their understanding of inferences, author's purpose, traditional literature, story elements, etc. 

6. Students rotated again and answered in complete sentences the questions created by the previous group. They discussed the story and their answers before writing them down.

7. Finally, we discussed what students learned from this project as a class. 

Here are some photos of what this looked like and my rubric if you would like to use it 

Biography in a Bottle

So often we wonder how to make projects more interesting , more engaging, give them something extra while teaching to the standards. The following is a project my students recently did with biographies:

1. Students chose a person from North Carolina or who contributed to NC history
2. They researched the person
3. Wrote a 5 paragraph essay on google docs
4. Created a poster board, google slides presentation or another creative way to present their work
5. Created their person from a water bottle
6. Presented their work with classmates commenting: 2-positive (constructive) comments, 1 thing the presenter can work on next time.


I received very positive feedback from my students about engaging in this project. They stayed interested even with the amount of work it required and took ownership of their work. Here is my rubric and a few examples of student work.