| Our
work on this project will continue over most of the ten week term we are
in now - the last term of our 2001 school year. We only started the
project work on 8 October, so we are very much still at the beginning of
what we hope to achieve. You can read about our classroom activities
based on this project on our developing web
site.
There are many outcomes I hope the children achieve from this project, however the major outcome is that they develop an understanding that people the world over have some differences but many similarities! We have more stories to read and countries to visit, but we have been doing a variety of activities already. First we read the original version of Cinderella by Charles Perrault. We really enjoyed the magic and romance of it all. Then we read an Indian version of the Cinderella tale, titled The Enchanted Anklet by Lila Mehta. This story introduced us to more magic and mysticism. Here below we will show you some samples of the work we have done so far and the exciting things we have seen. In our school we have an Indian teacher aide, and some children of Indian background. They brought to school some very beautiful clothes and photos of traditional Indian weddings. We think the bride and groom in these photos must look like Cinduri and her Crown Prince from The Enchanted Anklet
We have used some different types of Graphic Organizers to analyze and discuss the characters and events in the stories we have read so far. One day we made a 'hands-on' Venn Diagram on the carpet using hoops, and then created a copy of it in our books. We looked at how the two tales - Cinderella and The Enchanted Anklet - had many similar elements and some elements that were exactly the same. Here is a Venn Diagram drawn by Savannah.
One of the other activities we have been doing is to look at the characters in each story and record their character traits and behaviours on a Character Web. We did a whole group Character Web for 'Cinderella'. However for The Enchanted Anklet tale the children worked together in four small groups to record the traits and behaviours of each character. The children wrote their responses on a blank copy of the web, but I have created a completed copy of the web for you all to see. |
