Here are some activities you can do with this book:
Story Retell:
This is a great story for retell because the pictures are descriptive. Your students can use the pictures to help them complete a story map and retell with transition words, or you can take pictures of the book and have your students sequence them before retelling the story.
Expansion Questions:
Either while I am reading a story or afterwards, I like to ask questions to stimulate deeper thinking. Here is a list of questions I plan on asking:
1. Why was the boy listening for Santa's sleigh?
2. Why are the only passengers on the Polar Express children?
3. The boy could ask Santa for anything in the world, why did he ask for a simple bell?
4. Why can the boy and his sister hear the bell while their parents could not?
5. Why can the boy still hear the bell as an adult, while his sister and friends cannot?
6. What does the bell represent?
Compare and Contrast:
A great way to work on compare and contrasting whole stories is to compare a book to the movie made about that book. I am an avid reader and I love a good movie. One of my biggest pet peeves is when Hollywood destroys a good book by changing the story. The book was popular for a reason and should be treated as such...sorry, got a little carried away. Ok, back to the point. Some movie trailers are a pretty good picture of what the movie is going to be about, and can be used to compare and contrast the movie with the book it is made about. One such case is The Polar Express. Have your kids watch the movie trailer and then use that to make comparisons with the book. Here is the trailer in case you can't get on YouTube.
Figurative Language:
Chris Van Allsburg uses figurative language to describe several different parts of his story. Some of which, he also adds to the illustration. This a great time to work on figurative language because you have the illustrations to help you explain it. Some specific things you can discuss are:
Picture2: "Wrapped in an apron of steam"
Picture 3: "nougat centers as white a snow"
"hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars"
Picture 5: "mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon"
"rolling over peaks and through valleys like a car on a roller coaster"
Picture 6: "they looked like the lights of a strange ocean liner sailing on a frozen sea"
Hot Chocolate:
A great way to end this unit is to make hot chocolate like the kind they had in the story to work on following directions skills. I found a microwave hot chocolate recipe that will let us make hot chocolate from scratch. (or at least without the mix). This year, I decided to send home permission slips at the beginning of the year to cover all food activities. That way we could make things whenever we wanted.
Get your Microwave Hot Chocolate recipe here!!
Story Retell:
This is a great story for retell because the pictures are descriptive. Your students can use the pictures to help them complete a story map and retell with transition words, or you can take pictures of the book and have your students sequence them before retelling the story.
Expansion Questions:
Either while I am reading a story or afterwards, I like to ask questions to stimulate deeper thinking. Here is a list of questions I plan on asking:
1. Why was the boy listening for Santa's sleigh?
2. Why are the only passengers on the Polar Express children?
3. The boy could ask Santa for anything in the world, why did he ask for a simple bell?
4. Why can the boy and his sister hear the bell while their parents could not?
5. Why can the boy still hear the bell as an adult, while his sister and friends cannot?
6. What does the bell represent?
Compare and Contrast:
A great way to work on compare and contrasting whole stories is to compare a book to the movie made about that book. I am an avid reader and I love a good movie. One of my biggest pet peeves is when Hollywood destroys a good book by changing the story. The book was popular for a reason and should be treated as such...sorry, got a little carried away. Ok, back to the point. Some movie trailers are a pretty good picture of what the movie is going to be about, and can be used to compare and contrast the movie with the book it is made about. One such case is The Polar Express. Have your kids watch the movie trailer and then use that to make comparisons with the book. Here is the trailer in case you can't get on YouTube.
Figurative Language:
Chris Van Allsburg uses figurative language to describe several different parts of his story. Some of which, he also adds to the illustration. This a great time to work on figurative language because you have the illustrations to help you explain it. Some specific things you can discuss are:
Picture2: "Wrapped in an apron of steam"
Picture 3: "nougat centers as white a snow"
"hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars"
Picture 5: "mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon"
"rolling over peaks and through valleys like a car on a roller coaster"
Picture 6: "they looked like the lights of a strange ocean liner sailing on a frozen sea"
Hot Chocolate:
A great way to end this unit is to make hot chocolate like the kind they had in the story to work on following directions skills. I found a microwave hot chocolate recipe that will let us make hot chocolate from scratch. (or at least without the mix). This year, I decided to send home permission slips at the beginning of the year to cover all food activities. That way we could make things whenever we wanted.
Get your Microwave Hot Chocolate recipe here!!
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