Fairy tale doll's houses as a learning aid in teaching literature

This master's thesis aims to explore the added value of using fairy tale doll's houses as a learning aid with the purpose of enhancing the understanding of fairy tale stories as well as the identification with various literary characters in first-grade primary school children. The first part of the thesis comprises a theoretical basis for the research, a description of the basic characteristics of the fairytale genre and an overview of teaching children's literature. It also includes an outline of the criteria for the choice of texts used in lessons as well as an introduction to the phases of collective text interpretation in school and the work of children's book author Aksinja Kermauner. The focus lies on the project called 'A book in the box' [BookBox]. This project, which serves as the basis for the creation of a fairytale doll's house, was designed by the aforementioned author and her colleagues. The thesis stresses the positive effects of dramatisation in class and of other activities based on acting and play. Each of the chosen literary works is representative of a specific type of fairy tale. The empirical part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the chosen literary works in accordance with the criteria that apply specifically to the theory of fairy tales and were developed by the Swiss fairy tale researcher Max Lüthi. I gave six lessons to first-grade pupils, during which they were divided into the experiment and the control group. While I used the fairy tale doll's houses in teaching the first group, I based the literature lesson for the control group on the traditional teaching model. The research work was carried out in the months of April and May 2017 at Stane Žagar Primary School in Kranj. It involved 20 first-grade pupils and took the form of 6 consecutive lessons. The following paragraphs deal with my preparations for the use of the fairy tale doll's houses as a learning aid, a detailed analysis of the lessons as well as some reactions of the pupils and their experiences. To provide a clearer picture, I added the pupils' statements, reactions and opinions during the lessons, including their thoughts and the level of identification with the literary characters from the chosen texts (The Tale of the Dressmaker and the Little Scissors, Mojca Pokrajculja, The Sleepy Twinkle Star). The last chapter of the empirical part provides findings that directly answer the research questions outlined in the introduction