Best video fairy tales for English classes

What can be more fascinating for children than to watch their favourite fairy tales in English? Fairy tales present a great number of opportunities for improving learner’s English. If books provide only colourful illustrations and tend to hone students’ reading and comprehension skills, video fairy tales are excellent tools for practising both reading (some of them have subtitles) and listening skills. Apart from that, presented pictures completely absorb kids in the fairy tale. Taking into account the significant role of video fairy tales in the English classroom, today we will be introducing a list of the most well known and amazing fairy tales.

«The Princess and the Pea»

The author of this fairy tale is Hans Christian Andersen. It is about the prince who wants to get married but can’t find a suitable wife. Whoever he meets are ill-mannered, too fat or too thin. One stormy night a young woman drenched with rain seeks appears in the prince’s castle. She claims to be a princess. Meanwhile, the prince’s mother makes up her mind to test whether or not this girl is a true princess. So she places a pea in the girl’s bed. In the morning, the guest tells her hosts that she had a sleepless night because there was something hard in the bed. The prince rejoices, since only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding, so they get married.

“Cinderella”

This fairy tale never gets old-fashioned. Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters are very cruel towards her and do their best to make her life intolerable. Despite all difficulties, Cinderella never gives up and one day she meets the Prince and falls in love. They get married and live happily.

Since the story is known to most kids, it becomes easier for them to understand and reproduce the story. It is full of useful adjectives and verb phrases. Your kids will also have a great chance to practise Past tenses.

“The Boy who cried wolf”

The author of this tale is Greek fable writer Aesop. It tells us how a boy continues to lie about seeing a wolf. One day, when he actually does see a wolf, no one believes his screams. The story gives an amazing teaching lesson to children — to be honest, and never to lie. Since the duration of this video tale is quite short, you can use it whenever you have a couple of free minutes at the end of your lesson.

“Snow White and Seven Dwarfs”

The fairy tale introduces such elements as the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the glass coffin, the characters of the Evil Queen and Snow White and the seven dwarfs. Snow White’s evil stepmother, has a magic mirror, which always says to her: «My Queen, you are the most beautiful woman in the world». The Queen is always pleased with that because the magic mirror never lies. But as Snow White grows up, she becomes more beautiful each day and even more beautiful than the Queen. The latter envies Snow White and wants to kill her.

“Peter Pan”

Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist J. M. Barrie. Peter Pan is a  free-spirited and young boy who can fly and never grows up. He spends his childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans. This fairy tale is mostly admired by boys.

“Hansel and Gretel”

Hansel and Gretel are children whose father is a woodcutter. When a great famine settles over the land, the woodcutter’s abusive second wife decides to take the children into the woods. Her plan was to leave the kids in the woods so that she and her husband will not starve to death. She thinks that the children eat too much.

With these magical video fairy tales, your English classes will be more fascinating and your students will have great fun.

What other video fairy tales do your students fancy?