Orientation Week: Story Retelling: Aesop's Fables

Now that you understand just what is involved in telling a story in your own words, for this assignment, you will choose any one of the Aesop's Fables by Joseph Jacobs and provide a retelling of the story in your own words.

Most of the Aesop's fables are very short, so your strategy in retelling the story will be to develop it at greater length - adding details, adding dialogue, describing the setting, combining two stories into one (for example, you could combine two different stories about a fox, two different stories about a lion, etc.). Please just let your imagination run wild!

The idea is that by being creative, you can be absolutely confident that you have told the story in your own words, creating your own new version of the traditional tale. Here is a Sample Assignment to give you the general idea. If you're looking for storytelling ideas, you might also want to glance through these 50+ Ideas for Storytelling.

After you write your version of the story, you will publish the story your Ning blog. Here are the specific requirements:

• Check length and spelling. Your retelling must be at least 200 words long and not more than 600 words. Depending on which story you choose to retell, you may have to really expand on the original, since most Aesop's fables are very short. GoogleDocs is a great way to spellcheck and also check your word count. You can also use WordCountPlus to check the word count after you publish the post.
• Proofread. As always, do not forget to proofread your post. The best way to proofread is by taking a couple minutes to read the story OUT LOUD to yourself.
• Post title. Make sure you include the phrase Week 1 Aesop's Fable somewhere in the title of your post - along with the title of your specific story. Example: Week 1 Aesop's Fable: The Lion and The Mouse.
• Author's note. Please explain in a sentence or two what changes you made to the original story. This is really important to do when you make changes to the character and/or changes to the plot of the story, or when you give the story a new kind of moral.
• Link to original story. Please make sure you provide a link to the original story in your post, so that people can compare your version to the original. Here are the notes about adding links to Ning blog posts.
• Optional: include image. Please feel free to include an image if you want; if you include an image, make sure you also provide Image Information. Here are the notes about including images in Ning blog posts.

After you are done with the assignment, don't forget to make your Gradebook Declaration!