The authors have various definitions of fairytales; however, they all agree that it is a prose narrative that can also be found in poetry and drama and is recognized by its typical style.
Listening to and reading fairytales, as well as storytelling, have a significant impact on a child's development. It is essential that both parents and teachers encourage children in this process.
The topic of this master's thesis is a fairytale project in the fourth grade. The thesis consists of a theoretical and empirical parts. In the theoretical part, firstly, the fairytale is presented – its different definitions, characteristics, and categorization based on authors. Secondly, storytelling and its impact on reading development and the stages of development of children in the fourth grade are presented – how skillful the child is at reading, how the parents and teachers can help him improve his skills, and how the child's receptive ability changes during the performance of specific logical operations. Next is a description and presentation of the theatre with a definition and a typology of plays. It is followed by a description of the school drama activity, the goals of literature lessons, a description of playwriting for the youth, including the drama activities, and instructions on how to dramatize a fairytale. At the end of the theoretical part, there are analyses of the curriculum from which we can determine where precisely the fairytales and drama activities are mentioned.
In the empirical part, I carried out a fairytale project in the 4th grade at Stična Elementary School. The research findings included the following: how to prepare for the fairytale project, what parts of preparation require special attention, how to implement it and motivate children, how to train and prepare them for independent dramatization and performance, and what is the duration of a fairytale project. The class was divided into four groups, and each prepared a different performance. By analyzing the collected data, I found out what the nature of students' participation in the group was like, what consisted of their preparation for the project, and how the project implementation went. In the two groups, the cooperation was excellent, and all tasks were completed without any problems, as did the preparation and implementation of the project. Two groups experienced some issues that were successfully solved with my help.
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