I LOVE The Polar Express! I think I may have said that before. 🙂
When I was first introduced to The Polar Express, I generally just planned one fun day for my students. While we did discuss the book, I didn’t encourage my students to dig in and think deeply or require much real work that day.
Over time, I started doing a complete Polar Express unit that I would teach for about a week.
I wanted it to be fun, but more importantly, I wanted my kiddos to really think, write, and learn.
Because I am such a “writing person” at heart and I LOVE journaling, I created a mini-journal that reflects on some of the deeper understandings of the book.
The Polar Express journal kit is so cute! It even has labeled tabs.
When I created my Polar Express Reflection Journal, I had a vast array of learning abilities in my classroom…just like most classrooms.
I created two sets of reflection journals to meet the needs of all of my students. One journal is what I refer to as basic, and the other journal is a bit more advanced.
Here are The Polar Express basic reflection journal prompts:
- My favorite part of The Polar Express is…
- The boy could ask Santa for anything; why do you think he chose a bell?
- If I could choose the first gift of Christmas, I would choose…
- If you could go on your own magical journey, where would you go? Why?
- I believe…
- What connections did you make to The Polar Express?
- What is The Polar Express mainly about?
- Chris Van Allsburg probably wrote The Polar Express to…
- The boy could ask Santa for anything; why do you think he chose a bell?
- If you could go on your own magical journey, where would you go? Why?
At the top of the writing paper, I just wrote Polar Express; that way, you could use it with any of the prompts.
If you are interested in creating your own reflection journals, you could use some of the following materials:
- folded manila or white paper
- take several sheets of notebook paper and staple a manila paper to the front and back to make a cover
- use a spiral notebook {have kids decorate the cover}
- use a composition book
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