Cinderella Around the World

Cinderella is my FAVORITE fairy tale to teach in the classroom! I started teaching this unit about 9 years ago when I taught my first year of 1st grade and it has never grown old for me. That is saying a lot because I get bored easily!!

We use multiple versions of Cinderella to teach character, setting, plot, compare/contrast, making inferences, and just about every other comprehension standard you can think of. The bonus to Cinderella is that you can also focus on cultures all around the world because the story is not confined to one culture or people. This makes for a very well rounded week of reading that leads into a really cool week of writing. I get giddy just thinking about it!

Here is an overview of our Cinderella Around the World unit:

Reading:

First we share the original Cinderella story (not necessarily the Disney version, but we refer to it a lot because the kiddos are familiar with it) and then we read about 5 or 6 more depending on how much time we have.

This blog post outlines a perfect Cinderella Around the World unit for first grade. Includes details on how to create an anchor chart to teach character, setting, and plot as you read these fun stories as well as writing activities to teach 1st grade opinion writing standards.

We use this chart to record the character, setting, problem and solution, and also compare what changes we noticed from the original story. This picture shows the work in progress.

One interesting note that my students always notice is that fairy tales give the setting right away. Once upon time in a small village, in the deep wilderness, on the shores of a mighty ocean.... you get the picture but the first sentence is a nice clear description of the setting.

I introduce one literary element after each story so by the end of the week we have talked about each element and each story.

Then we focus on retelling the story by focusing on the main details and retelling them in order. They love this part!

Writing:

In the second week, after we have explored Cinderella in every shape and form, we pick our favorite and write an opinion piece about our favorite version of the story. We create a rubric together (we had so much to remember!) and they write a rough draft. After they do a little peer revision and we have one session of editing they are ready for a final draft and picture.

Notice how tough they were on themselves on the rubric? This makes this assignment oh so easy to grade and they really do a nice job in all areas because the rubric came from them!

Here are a few of the final writing pieces. I always impressed with their writing!

See why it is my favorite? I just love how they all pick their favorite story for so many different reasons. For some it is the magic or that she is kind and for some it is because Cinderella looks like them. This is a really important reason to read all different versions of the same story so everyone can feel that connection.

Here is a list of some my favorites I have read over the years. The list just keeps growing and growing! These are affiliate links, meaning that if you click and purchase on Amazon I get a small amount at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

This year I got to add a little EXTRA to this unit because we were in quarantine and our first grade team still wanted to teach the unit. We couldn't find all of the stories we wanted online so I recorded them and put them on my Youtube channel. You can get links to the stories here.

Adelita

The Rough Faced Girl

Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters

The Egyptian Cinderella

Cindrillon

I will never be a professional Youtuber (and that is ok) but these did the trick and even during a time that we couldn't be together we got to enjoy Cinderella together. ❤️

Here is this unit in my TPT store. It includes the headers to make the anchor charts, detailed lesson plans of how I discuss each element with students and all of the writing pages. Click HERE or on the pic to see it!