Teaching Language Arts with Aesop's Fables

Language Arts lessons

with

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AESOP’S FABLES

How to create integrated language arts lessons using Aesop’s Fables

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FABLES PROVIDE EXCELLENT CONTENT FOR DISCUSSIONS AND PLOT ANALYSIS

A fable is a little story which imparts a moral lesson. It can be used to teach all language arts skills such as handwriting, spelling, grammar, word use, punctuation and writing style.

Turn any fable into a language arts lesson plan using these steps

THE TEN STEP OUTLINE

Once you have read and enjoyed the fable, copy it out carefully. This simple step teaches punctuation, spelling, grammar and handwriting practice.

STEP ONE: COPYWORK

Discuss the beautiful and interesting language used in the fable. Point out the spelling of difficult words, spelling patterns and rules;

STEP TWO: SPELLING

Discuss the way the fable was written. You can discuss the parts of speech, sentence beginnings, use of adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases –depending on the age of the children and their knowledge.

STEP THREE: GRAMMAR

Once the fable, the words, structure and punctuation have been discussed, use the fable for dictation. Read the fable and the child writes it from memory.

STEP FOUR: DICTATION

Remove all the flowery, descriptive parts out of the passage so you are left with the barebones of the passage.

Write an outline of the plot or description. Use only a few keywords to capture what the main points are.

STEP FIVE: KEYWORD OUTLINE

Create an interest filled paragraph.

You can either choose to stay as close to the original as possible, or choose to make your own creative work - using your own characters, story maps and graphic organizers.

STEP SIX: WORKING WITH WORDS

Focus on improving the style by using different sentence openers, prepositional phrases, adverbial and adjectival clauses, and using metaphors and similes.

STEP SEVEN: WORKING WITH STYLE

Fable Bundles which include 5 fables, helpful information on each fable,

graphic organizers, printable worksheets with either Manuscript,

D’Nealian or Cursive script for tracing and re-writing. Available at

www.design-your-homeschool.com/aesops-fables.html

STEP EIGHT: PROOFREADINGSTEP NINE: RE-WRITINGSTEP TEN: FINAL COPY

NOW SOLD AS A BUNDLE!

5 Fable Bundle:

Available at www.design-your-

homeschool.com/aesops-fables.html