Life’s A Fairy Tale At OES

ORLEANS – Cinderella. Snow White. Jack and the Beanstalk.

Generations of kids grew up with these and other fairytales as part of their youth. But Martha Jenkins said she noticed that at Orleans Elementary School, where she has taught for more than three decades, many students today aren’t as readily familiar with these stories as those who came before them.

“I was becoming a little concerned that they really didn’t know any fairy tales, or very few,” said Jenkins, a literacy interventionist at the elementary school.

Having an understanding of fairy tales is important for young students, Jenkins said, noting that they help introduce students to concepts such as good versus evil, problem solving and the importance of helping others. As students grow up and venture out into the world, she said they’ll also find that they’re frequently referenced in conversation.

In February, Jenkins coordinated a Folklore Fairytale Festival at the school with the goal of better familiarizing students with fairytales. She read to kindergartners and other students at lunch during “Fairy Tale Fridays.” The school also had “Fairy Tale Trivia” in an effort to teach students about the stories and the cultures from which they derived.

For Jenkins, creative exercises such as the Fairy Tale Festival are part of the school’s broader goal of finding new ways of fostering a love of reading in students.

“I just want kids to read,” she said. “I just want kids to be excited about books. Everything I do, I just try to make it fun for them.”

Fairy Tales are not core to the elementary school curriculum, Jenkins said. Instead, students have historically been exposed to them more at home when reading with their parents. But the greater demands placed on parents today can make it harder to carve out that time to read in the home, she said.

“There has definitely been a shift, and I think I especially see it with the reading,” she said. “Less reading is kind of part of the culture outside of school.”

With that, Jenkins and the rest of the staff at OES are working to find ways to put an added emphasis on the importance of reading in the school. Jenkins has helped coordinate other reading-driven initiatives for students, including “One School, One Book,” in which students across all grade levels spend time with the same book. She has also coordinated literacy nights at the school.

“It’s a culture,” she said of the school’s emphasis on the importance of reading. “They’ll always walk into the atrium or the main hallways and see something that connects to reading.”

Keeping a focus on reading is also important at a time where students are seeking out and getting more information through phones, tablets and other modes of technology. Jenkins said that’s not necessarily a bad thing, so long as it’s balanced out with spending time with books.

“To me it’s exposure,” she said. “There’s so many fun things to do in the world, but seriously, a book’s going to do a lot of fun stuff for you, too.”

And as a teacher, Jenkins said it’s not enough to talk to kids about the importance of reading. You have to show them its benefits.

“I guess my thing is to always model joy. ‘Oh my gosh, I get to read a book!’ I go to kindergarten every week and I read aloud every Friday morning, and it’s fun to just say to them ‘Isn’t this the best?’”

Email Ryan Bray at ryan@capecodchronicle.com