Hollywood Classroom Theme

Movies, stars, popcorn — bring it all together for a fun classroom theme that lends itself to art, social studies, and technology lessons.

Use big paper stars and put everyone’s name up in lights for a fun bulletin board. Slogans:

  • We’re stars
  • Starring us
  • Red Carpet Treatment
  • Celebrity Learning
  • Oscar winning performance!
  • Ready for our close-up!
  • And the winner is…

There are a couple of bulletin board sets for this theme:

Edupress has a set that works well in specific classes like math or reading, or for a general theme.

Eureka’s movie decorative set uses photos for a high level of realism.

Popcorn words are those unfamiliar words that pop up in reading. There they are, forcing themselves on your attention, so it’s natural to study them a bit, and easy to add them to your students’ vocabulary.

Here are some fun ways to work with popcorn words:

  • When an unfamiliar word pops up, write it on a popcorn kernel cutout and pin it on the board. As the class fully learns the new words, move them from their random floating spots on the board to a bowl of popcorn for a visual record of how many new words you’ve learned!
  • Give a fancy popcorn box cutout to each student, and let him write “My Popcorn Words” on the cover. Cut sheets of paper to fit, use the popcorn box for a cover, and each student can have her own booklet of words to learn. Depending on grade level, have students add illustrations, dictionary entries, and example sentences for each word.

popcorn bulletin board

  • Give a popcorn sticker every time a student uses one of the popcorn words correctly.
  • Celebrate the 100th new word (or the end of the unit, whichever comes first) with real popcorn and a movie version of one of the books you’ve read. Authentic popcorn bags add to the fun.

Fun stuff for your Hollywood theme classroom:

We also like using ticket cutouts for this theme.

Hollywood themeproject

Here we’ve used laminated ticket cutouts for the front and back cover of a mini-book. We cut construction paper into strips (have students measure the page and calculate the best use of the paper, using whatever math skills they need to practice), folded them inside the covers, and stapled.

classic accent book

We’re having students keep a list of useful online research sites because we want them to learn the correct way to cite an electronic source in their papers. In another class, we could have them keep track of new words they learned, collect number sentences they discovered in their research, or make themselves a cheat sheet for new software they were learning. Any skills or information you expect students to learn during your Hollywood unit is fair game!

classroom cutouts

We also like cutouts like these for flashcards. Write the question or prompt on the front and the answer on the back. Punch holes and put a large book ring through them to keep them together. You could use this to learn movie vocabulary, but it also keeps the theme going while you work on multiplication tables or states and capitals.

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