Fairy Tale Unit

After reading through a lot of the fairy tales I used to know as a child, I think back to how I really never thought about the intentions of each long tale. In some way or manner, each story had an underlying common theme or some lesson to be learned at the end of it.

For fairy tales, normally there is some damsel in distress and there is some "knight in shining armor" to save them, or dirty rags, but either way it is always the male doing the saving. There is an idea of male chauvanism within each story and they try to make the women seem to have so many issues and problems. With as many problems as they seem to have, who WOULD want to marry them.

Well, if i were to have my students read through these "classic tales" i would make sure they first would right a short summary of what they think the story is about before they read it. Then, id let them read the story/ies and the next day come back and retell the story in a modern way. This would bring home the stories more to the children because they are trying to apply them in a modern day society and also it would implement an english activity/lesson.