Folk Tale Elements

We have been reading and discussing a lot of folk tales over the last few weeks. We made a chart of all the common elements you see across all folk tales and most folk tales. We then illustrated these characteristics.

Then, we picked a few elements to focus on, and analyzed a folk tale to see if they were present. We looked at Gerald McDermott's retelling of Zomo, a folk tale from West Africa. Everyone looked to see if this story had talking animals, the rule of 3, and a lesson or moral. Then, after discussing it with a partner and planning out what they were going to say, students wrote a page of analysis, supporting their argument with specific examples from the text.