Fairy Tales: A Useful Teaching Tool

Fairy tales are cheap and easy for everybody to have their own copy and a short tale means less reading time. Most adults have short attention spans let alone a room full of children, so this is a way of getting them reading as a group whilst letting their imaginations follow the journey of the story through their own interpretation!

They are universal. ‘Although it is interesting to compare culturally specific details in folklore from different times and places, one of the most intriguing phenomena in human experience is the similarities in stories with universal themes from all over the world.' Fairy tales are a great way of teaching students a new story and then relating it to another story somewhere else in the world.

They allow children (and adults alike) to identify with the hero of the story and follow the quest through tragedy and triumph. Teaching them that although there are problems in life that if they continue to fight and do the right thing that life will be good in the end. This opens up possibilities only ever dreamed of, and allows an otherwise limited imagination to soar into a realm of absolute possibility. They represent human experience and encourage interplay between many other facets in literature.