How our research relates to Fairy Tales.
The article, A Palimpsest of Stories: Young Children's Construction of Intertextual Links among Fairytale Variants, was a research study of read alouds with first and second graders introducing different versions of Rapunzel to them. The teacher acted more as the facilitator for guiding the children with developing their thoughts more. The teacher did not take a whole lot of time to introduce the book but mainly focused on the front and back covers. She allowed the students to take over the discussion. Each version has something that is a little different from the one before and the teacher ends the read aloud with the most different version of Rapunzel. For the first version, the children did not have many insights as to what was going to happen and made personal connections to the story in order for comprehension to develop. The students are using their analytical skills to understand the story that most have heard for the first time. For the second version that was read another day, the students were comparing the first text to the second text and applying inter-textual skills to understand the differences between stories. The third version of Rapunzel provided the beginning of schema building based on their knowledge of the other two versions. The students’ schema was built up for Rapunzel and for fairy tales in general. By the fourth version, the students are able to make educated predictions based on the building schema of Rapunzel and consolidate the information they have learned and practice it. The students are able to refine and develop further their schema on Rapunzel by hearing the most variant of the texts last, where they can analyze the different versions after they have heard them. The end version also provides for the students to analyze all of the different versions and to suggest their own variants to the story based on their schema on Rapunzel. This also provides the opportunity for the students to write their own Rapunzel story. The schema building process begins with the students personalizing the story for themselves and making their own life connections. Then the students make connections from Rapunzel to other fairy tales building their fairy tale schema. By close reading, the students can analyze the story in detail including the characters, plot, and setting.
The article described how the teacher read diverse versions of Rapunzel to students in read aloud form with a picture walk to begin with, and allowed students to freely express their thoughts. This research builds on our point of providing multiple versions of a story if possible either by different writers and/or illustrators or possibly including different viewpoints. This provides students at a young age to build their schema that there are different versions to every story and they should listen to all of them to build their schema from that. After they make personal connections to the story, which is the easiest for comprehension for young children especially, they can develop an understanding of the story through hearing it in various ways. Students can then use their developed schema to analyze the story in detail and then develop ideas to write their own version of the story based on their prior knowledge from the readings. This research was done in read alouds which is best for comprehension because listening is higher than reading comprehension usually. The teacher only guided the students to further their conversations and did not initiate them providing the students with choice and power in their own learning. By providing different versions of stories, especially fairy tales because they are so popular and well known, the students can build skills needed for comprehension building and analyzing skills at a young age.
Sipe, L. (2001). A Palimpsest of Stories: Young Children's Construction of Intertextual Links among Fairytale Variants. Reading Research and Instruction, 40(4), 333-352. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8bd14c5e-1624-4f94-b3c9-e8d447731a10%40sessionmgr4001&vid=4&hid=116