Lesson Plan: Fairy Tales and Gender Roles
(based on content from the Gender Spectrum: What Educators Need to Know)
Excerpts:
Core Competencies: • Personal Awareness and Responsibility – Self-determination
First Peoples Principles of Learning: • Learning requires exploration of one’s identity
Rationale: This instructional sample allows students to explore relationship dynamics, and factors that influence self-identity, through a gender-based lens.
Non-traditional Fairy Tales
o Prince Cinders
o Snow White in New York
o The Sissy Duckling
o Princess Smarty Pants
Ask students to write their own non-traditional fairy tale where the prince or princess is portrayed in a non-gender specific role. Tell them you are looking for non-sexist behaviour in at least one character.
Assessment:
• Ask students to identify what events within their non-traditional Fairytales helped free the characters from their kingdom’s expectations. Have them hypothesize how they might feel if they were that character before and after the event which granted them more personal freedom. Draw parallels to people lives within your school or community.
Full lesson plan available in: The Gender Spectrum: What Educators Need to Know (page 33)
The complete 4-page lesson plan can eventually be seen here. On the first arrival page, click on the “Download Lesson Plan (EN)” button and then when the Fairy Tales and Gender Roles page of the BCTF’s Teach BC website appears, click on the “Download files” navigation button. You will need Microsoft Word to read the lesson plan.