In my classroom, and in my books, I often share short folktales to help communicate “life lessons” — perseverance, the importance of relationships, etc. Obviously, we teachers can and should use our own background knowledge and skills to find these stories and develop interpretations for them.

Sometimes, though, it’s nice to have had someone do some of the work for us already.

Here are a few sources of good folktales — with interpretations already clearly embedded in them. I hope readers and share other sites, too.

Thee are my choices for The Best Sites For Finding Folktales To Teach “Life Lessons”:

I’ll start off with a previous “The Best…” list — The Best Sites For Using Aesop’s Fables In The Classroom.

David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 has created an extraordinary collection of Stories to inspire and teach. He’s also created a video collection. He has more Learning Through Stories videos here.

A group called Learning To Give has a collection of folktales divided by the character trait they believe it teachers — generosity, respect, etc. Thanks to Renee Hill for the tip.

You can access a good portion of a The Moral Of The Story at Google Books.

Again, I hope readers will suggest other resources.

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