One of the weird things going on this week is that we have standardized testing. Except today, of course. We ended up having to cancel our testing period at the last minute (literally one or two minutes after school started) because so many buses arrived late today. I was a little stressed about having to teach during a period I had not prepared for, but it turned out to be a good thing. I had the students write about Cinderella from the point of the shoe. They loved it! As you can imagine, many of their stories involved sweaty feet and general smelliness. Some of the more creative also involved shoes that wanted to learn how to cook, a shoe/feet war, and one shoe getting married to another. I'm seriously thinking about not giving this assignment back to the students and bringing it home with me, just for laughs.
I also got to teach about empowerment today. After reading "Cinder Edna" (a story about a Cinderella-type girl who takes the initiative in living happily ever after), the whole class got into a great discussion about choosing to be happy and helping ourselves instead of waitng for someone to rescue us. The funny part is, most of them have already given this some thought and have very strong opinions about it. Empowered third-grade girls are pretty darn fantastic.
I'll bet your students (boys AND girls) would love "Fanny's Dream" by Caralyn Buehner. It's a picture book and one of my favorite empowered Cinderella stories. The Cinderella character (Fanny) gets tired of waiting for Prince Charming to show up, and marries the neighboring farmer instead. In the end she realizes that her husband is better than any prince because he is dependable and treats her like a princess.
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