Using Frozen in the Classroom

One thing you rapidly learn about me in my classroom is my love of ANYTHING Disney, which is why I was all to excited when their newest animated work of genius came out this year. As more and more students in my class went and saw the movie, the discussions about it abounded during our morning meeting. Taking advantage of the enthusiasm, I began to encourage the research of information about the movie. Early on, students were bringing in books from the library about Hans Christian Andersen and reading adapted versions of The Snow Queen. By the time January rolled around, I still had about half of my class who had not seen the movie yet. I decided to use this to my advantage. One of our third grade writing standards is conducting short research projects. I came up with a list of topics students could choose to research. They were invited to work individually or together and could present their information in any way they like.

Some students chose to quickly research everything on the list. Others spent more time researching one of the topics. 

My only regret was sending home finished products with the students after they presented. These were some of the few I had left after room clean up at the end of the year. They all did an amazing job! I told my students after they researched and learned from this list, we could watch the movie. One of the best parts of this project was listening to the kids watching the movie and commenting on everything they had learned. The scene where the choir was singing from the church, someone yelled out that they were singing Joik. Another one asked if the fjord in the background was the Sogenefjord. 

Our learning did not stop here. Frozen inspired us to read this book:

And students loved working on sequels until the end of the year. 

Frozen was a great learning opportunity for our class this year. I hope you also take more time to learn all the amazing aspects of the movie that can be so easily overlooked. Have you ever used a movie as instructional material in your classroom?