Engage students in a discussion of characteristics that are typical of fairy tales by asking them to name a fairy tale and explain why they think it is one. Compare this explanation with that of another fairy tale that they name. Focus on students' abilities to generalize by encouraging such statements as "beginnings and endings are predictable," "stories take place 'once upon a
time,'" and "good usually wins over evil." Inform students that they will be exploring characters, objects, and events for the fairy tale of Cinderella.
Group students into teams of three or four. Give each group a large sheet of newsprint and a marker. Challenge groups to generate a list of everything they remember about the Cinderella story. Allow three to five minutes for students to generate ten to fifteen ideas.
After generating this list and writing it on the newsprint, give each group a copy of the If the Shoe Fits... activity sheet.
Have students sort the items on their list into the groups listed on the first section of the activity sheet - Characters, Objects, and Events.
Examples might include the Prince, the magic wand, and running away at midnight. For those groups that have only one or two items in a category, allow student to expand their list to include at least four or five.
Read aloud the Grimm brothers' version of the Cinderella story. During this reading, have students check off items that appear in any of the three categories and add new items to the lists using a marker of a different color. Ask students to compare and contrast this version and their remembrances.
To create visual representations to communicate the similarities and differences in the versions of the story, challenge students to organize their lists on the second section of the If the Shoe Fits... Activity Sheet so that it is easy to identify those items found only in the Grimm brothers' version, those only in their original lists, and those in both. Observe the format in which students organize the data they generate.
Teacher Note: Through classroom trials of this activity, three formats have emerged. Some students simply present their highlighted lists, some organize the data into three lists (Grimm, ours, both), and others use a Venn diagram or facsimile thereof.
Have selected groups present their results to the entire class to show various ways of representing the
information.
Give each group a different multicultural version of the Cinderella story to read (see the Bibliography). Have group members compare it with both the Grimm brothers' version and their own. Ask groups to explain how their multicultural version is more like either the Grimm brothers' version or their own recollections of the fairy tale. Students can record their responses in the third section of the activity sheet.
