I created an assignment based solely on ideas I gathered from Pinterest. I made a Polar Express day for my first grade classroom! First the students receive a note on Thursday to send home to their parents telling them what we will be doing in class the next day, to make sure no parents object to their child watching The Polar Express, and to tell them that they are allowed to wear their PJs to class as long as they are school appropriate.
Then, for that Friday, I found several activities for the students to do involving math and literacy skills. The first subject I plan to go over is math. I found three worksheets in which the students can do semi-independently that are educational and relate to The Polar Express. The first is using a bar graph to analyzing information in which they collect from their peers. It is a graph to tell if the majority of the students like marshmallows in their hot chocolate or not.
I also found a worksheet that the students have the freedom to be creative and innovative while also reviewing their knowledge of basic two-dimensional shapes. They can choose any shapes and colors they like and decorate their very own PJs with them. The girls might enjoy this more than the boys because it's just like playing dress up on their dolls, but it's still fun for the boys to create your own PJs. I like to think mine looks a bit like a puppy dog.
The last math assignment I found would be a bit more instructional than the other two. Using train cars, the students write their numbers from one to fifty. This should be pretty easy for most of the students to do so we will discuss grouping the numbers into sets of ten. From there we can discuss counting by tens, at least up to fifty.
After we were done with math, I found three English assignments for the students that will focus on using words to describe common objects to give real life meaning to adjectives, speaking and listening, and using images to convey ideas.
First, each student gets their own cup of hot chocolate (on a piece of paper). They think of one word in which they would use to describe hot chocolate, some students will be able to write their word down on their cup by themselves if they choose warm, dark, or hot, but others will need some help with their spelling. After everyone has their word we will make a big cup of hot chocolate and put all the words on the cup and to see all the adjectives people came up with.
I found two different, technically writing prompts, for the students to do, but since this is a first grade assignment I will read the two prompts aloud and they can choose which one they find more interesting. They will answer the prompt aloud one at a time. This improves the students ability to speak in public and to work on silently listening to your peers when they are speaking.
After we have done the math and talked about the north pole and magic trains, it is time to watch the movie! I will serve cookies since that is what is served on the train with milk instead of hot chocolate because that will be safer. I found fun color sheets for them to do in their spare time, if they finish one of the other assignments early, or while they were watching the movie.
After we have watched the movie we will work on expressing ideas through a visual aid. They will draw and color a picture of their favorite part of the movie. My favorite part was when the boy opened the tiny box under the tree and found the gift that meant the most to him, the jingle bell that Santa had given him.
If any of this interested you then follow my board on Pinterest!
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