This creative writing unit helps students to focus on the roles of character, setting, and plot elements while having fun retelling a traditional fairytale or nursery rhyme.

Doc A Assignment Explanation to hand to students

Doc B Notes you can hand out or give on the overhead explaining seven ways to fracture a fairytale (e.g., change character, change conflict, etc.)

Doc C A Planning worksheet students can fill out prior to writing, including a table about character, setting, plot, etc.

Doc D A list of sample fairytale/nursery rhyme titles (I allow either) to get students thinking about which one they’ll choose to fracture

Doc E A rubric for grading the fairytales, set up on a 25-point basis, which can be changed – this matches up with the assignment explanation (Doc A)

Doc F A sample fractured fairytale to hand out or read aloud: Hansel and Gretel

Idea: One thing I’ve had success with, after these are typed and polished, is letting students read them aloud in front of the class, into a microphone attached to my computer. Then I zip the audio files off in emails to their parents, and the parents really enjoy hearing them! I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from this step.