The Polar Express Unit Study
If you haven’t already read or seen the Polar Express book or Movie, you are missing out on a sweet holiday tradition. In our city, we even have a train that runs during the Christmas Season that does a whole Polar Express experience. When I was teaching in the classroom, we would take the kids to the Imax theater every December to see it and when they returned to the classroom each student had a silver bell sitting on their desk. Those cute first graders thought it was magical.
The Polar Express
After you have read or listened to the story, have your student work on their story mapping skills by doing the story map. If you haven’t already spent some time discussing with your student the vocabulary of story mapping, do that first. Talk about the setting and what that looks like in this story and use examples from other stories that you may have read together. Fill in the characters, problem and then write about how the problem was solved by the end of the book.
Reading
Once they have filled out each of the story map components they can then practice their comprehension by explaining what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story.
Writing
Get your student’s imagination going by having them imagine what would happen if they were woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of jingle bells. Have them tell their story on the Polar Express writing paper.
And then, if you dare- do this worksheet twice. Print it off first and have your student write out how they would make hot chocolate and then let them make it, using the directions. Then have them write down the directions again if they left out any steps the first time, make sure they include them this time.
Math
Then switch gears and work on some math skills with this telling time matching worksheet.
And then practice number order with the Polar Express Tickets
Are you looking for more Grab and Go Holiday Lessons? Check these out!
