Miss M Teaches Again

I’ve been using summer school as an opportunity to teach classic folktales and fables to my class. Because they are English Language Learners and language delayed, they often aren’t familiar with these classic stories and stories with built in lessons are always a plus.

Since we had studied animals throughout the school year, my students associate turtles with being slow and 7 weeks ago when I broke my foot, they started associating me with a turtle since I was walking and moving much slower than before. I figured this would be the perfect time to study the story of The Tortoise and the Hare.

I collected various versions of the book and had my students make predictions based on the cover and various other times as I read the story to them. The students immediately paralleled me to the turtle, teasing me for being slow and assumed the role of the rabbit predicting that his speed would allow him to win the race.

They were all quite surprised when the hare fell asleep and the tortoise moved past him and went on to win the race. As we continued to read, retell and act out the story throughout the week, each student volunteered first to play the role of the tortoise so they could bask in the celebration of winning the race. However, when I turned my back and allowed them to free-play with the props, every one of them allowed the hare to zoom past, skip his nap and go on to win the race.

While the message of “slow and steady wins the race” was lost on these 6 year-olds, I think they enjoyed the story and now I’m finally enjoying giving them a run for their money since my foot is almost healed and I’m not moving at turtle speed anymore.