1C Rapunzel

Lesson: English

Class: Year 1 - 1C Year: 2021 - 2022

Traditional tales (Rapunzel)

This term the children have been enjoying the traditional tale of Rapunzel.

We began the unit by having a visit from a mystery character! The character had visited our classroom and left behind some glitter, a black, pointy hat, a coudren, a spell book and a broom. They had left our classroom window open and there were glittery footprints left outside!.Once we checked the school cameras, we noticed that it was a witch who had visited us. Was this a good witch? A bad witch? A witch looking for somewhere to stay? We had lots of questions that we wanted to ask the witch so we wrote them all down.

We then moved on to look at the characters in our new book (Rapunzel). Together, we decided that the witch was an unkind and selfish character because she locked poor Rapunzel in a tall, dark tower. We used lots of adjectives to describe the characters, emotions to describe how they were feeling and also compared them to other good and bad characters from other traditional tales.

We explored new vocabulary from the text and used these words in our sentences. Then we looked at a model text called Dexter and the Troll. This text had lots of similarities to the Rapunzel story; there was an unkind troll who trapped poor Dexter in his own cave. He made Dexter eat rotten soup with toenails in it!

Exploring both texts enabled us to  become familiar with the structure of the texts and understand that traditional tales are stories about a good character overcoming a bad character. 

Using all of this knowledge, were able to identify that the stories had 5 main parts; 

1. Introducing the kind character and where they live
2. Bad character traps good character and is unkind
3. Kind character gets treated badly
4. The good character makes a plan
5. The good character escapes

The children had to work together in groups and read the 5 statements about each part of the Dexter story. Through discussion, they had to place them in the correct order (see below).

Sequence Activity
1 Dexter is a boy with blue eyes and black hair.
2 Dexter is trapped in a cave.
3 Dexter is made to make troll soup and told he
can never leave.
4 Dexter decides to make a plan with his rat friend to
escape.
5 Dexter and the rat make troll soup and escapes.

After putting them in order, the children had to re-enacted the story through role-play and freeze framing to represent each part of the story. 

We have thoroughly enjoyed both of the above texts and have even planned and wriiten our own traditional stories. Our stories will be posted on our class page once they are completed.