By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
👑 A story about identity that survives changed circumstances. Sara holds onto her father's idea that a girl's worth has nothing to do with her wealth or title, even after she loses her family, status, and everything she owns, testing whether her sense of self depends on her circumstances or something more internal. Her refusal to let go of that idea, even while working as a servant in the same school where she was once the star pupil, gives students a clear character throughline to follow.
🎗️ A visible, personal window into World War I's impact at home. Sara's father leaves to fight in the war and is later reported killed, giving students a concrete, personal example of what wartime separation and loss meant for families rather than an abstract historical fact. Other characters, including an elderly neighbor awaiting news of his own son, add further weight to how the war reaches beyond the battlefield.
📖 A story rooted in a well-known classic novel. The movie is based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1905 novel of the same name, giving students exposure to a story that has remained popular and been adapted multiple times. This offers a natural point of comparison for students who go on to read the original book.
🏚️ A sharp portrayal of class and fortune reversed. Sara goes from the school's wealthiest and most favored student to a servant sleeping in the attic once her father's fortune is seized, giving students a vivid before and after view of how quickly circumstances can change. Her friendship with Becky, a servant girl at the school from the start, adds another layer to how the story treats class and privilege.
🤝 Kindness and generosity even in hardship. Even after losing everything, Sara continues to defend and befriend the girls other students look down on, and gives away food to someone hungrier than herself despite her own poverty. Her behavior gives students a clear model of generosity that persists regardless of personal circumstances.
✨ Storytelling and imagination as a way of coping. Sara uses invented stories and fairy tales throughout the movie to process what is happening to her, including reimagining her own hardships through the tale of Prince Rama. This gives students a way to think about how imagination and storytelling can help someone endure difficult circumstances.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated G.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- The movie includes wartime violence, including trench scenes with fallen soldiers and battlefield explosions.
- Sara's father is presumed killed in action, and a neighboring family also awaits news of a missing son.
- There is a brief scene where young girls find a bottle of alcohol in the headmistress's office, and adults are shown drinking brandy without drunkenness.
- There is no language, sexual content, or drug use in the movie.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. A Little Princess gives an ELA class a book adaptation to study, following Sara's character arc from privileged student to servant while she holds onto her father's belief that dignity comes from character, not wealth or title. Students build inference and character analysis skills through the character mind map, sequencing and synthesis skills through the nine-scene storyboard, and narrative condensing through the synopsis writing task. Discussion questions add a chance for critical thinking about Sara's choices and how her circumstances shape the story.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The movie's dialogue is clear and emotionally grounded, and Sara's storytelling scenes return to the same key phrase throughout, reinforcing language through repetition. The visual contrast between Sara's wealthy early life and her later servitude also gives ESL students strong context clues to follow the plot even before the dialogue fully lands. The multiple-choice comprehension set works well alongside these supports, giving ESL and ELL students a structured way to check their understanding.
🌐 Social Studies Teachers. Sara's story plays out against the backdrop of World War I, giving a Social Studies class a personal, human view of how the war reached families waiting at home, not just soldiers at the front. The movie also lays out a sharp class divide between wealthy students and the servants working alongside them at the school, offering a way into discussing wealth, status, and social hierarchy in the early twentieth century. The guide does not include a dedicated history or social studies activity, but the two comprehension question sets keep students engaged with this content throughout the movie.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. With two sets of differentiated comprehension questions, discussion questions, a character mind map, and a storyboard and synopsis activity, this guide gives a substitute a full, organized lesson to run. Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets. A substitute can manage the session without having seen the movie.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. A Little Princess opens up real conversation for a homeschool parent and child around identity, resilience, and how someone holds onto who they are when their circumstances completely change. The guide's character mind map works particularly well for a single student, letting them dig into one character in depth, and the storyboard and synopsis task gives a creative outlet alongside the comprehension work.
💙 SEL Teachers. Sara loses her father, her wealth, and her status within the same movie, and her response, holding onto generosity and kindness toward Becky and the other girls even while suffering herself, gives an SEL class real material for discussing resilience and grief. Her refusal to measure her own worth by what she owns or her position in the school also opens a conversation about identity and self-worth that isn't tied to status or belongings. The guide does not include a dedicated SEL activity, but the comprehension questions keep students following Sara's emotional arc closely as the movie plays out.
🌟 Supporting All Learners Movie guides can be a wonderfully calm fit for students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities. The structured format gives every student a clear purpose during viewing, easing uncertainty and allowing them to engage at their own pace. If you teach in a special education or learning support setting, you may find this guide a gentle and practical resource. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 12-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Two differentiated sets of comprehension questions in chronological order, with 32 full-sentence-answer questions and 31 multiple-choice questions offering three answer options each, plus one additional full-sentence-answer question at the end of the multiple-choice set. The multiple-choice set works well for ESL and ELL students. Answer keys are included for both sets.
Part 2: Discussion Questions and Character Mind Map
Students answer five critical thinking questions for class discussion, which could also work well completed in pairs, with example answers included. Students then complete a character mind map, picking a character, writing their name and drawing their face in the center bubble, and filling each surrounding bubble with words or drawings based on the guide's prompts.
Part 3: Storyboard and Synopsis
Students create a nine-scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the movie, with each scene including a short description of the main idea it represents, using the movie questions to guide sequencing. Using their storyboards as a guide, students then write a synopsis of the movie.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
A movie is not a break from learning. It reaches students through sight, sound, and story at once, engaging the brain in ways text alone does not, and the structured work around it is what turns the viewing into a genuine lesson. You can read the research behind this on the Why Movies Work page.
- A Teacher Notes and General Directions page opens the guide with a brief overview of everything inside: what the movie is about, then each part of the guide in order with a short description of what it entails. You know what to expect from the whole resource before you hand out a single page, so you can pick up the guide cold and teach it the same day.
- Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets, so grading is quick and you are not rewatching the movie to check answers. Some guides also include example answers for the creative and written activities.
- Print and go: classroom ready, with no additional preparation needed. Print one the morning you need it and the lesson is ready.
- Substitute and first-timer friendly. A guide can be handed to a substitute or picked up by a teacher covering the topic for the first time. Nobody running the session needs to have seen the movie.
- Differentiated comprehension sets. Most guides include two or three question sets at different difficulty levels, and most include a multiple-choice option that works well for ESL and ELL students. One class set covers your strongest readers, your strugglers, and your language learners without separate prep.
- Activities that go beyond recall. Each guide includes structured activities that ask students to engage with the movie, not just watch it, ranging from creative and written tasks to discussion and critical thinking questions depending on the guide. That variety matters in a mixed classroom: a student who freezes on a written question set may show real understanding through a drawing or a creative task, and a confident writer gets room to go beyond recall. For the teacher, it turns a movie session into work that can actually be assessed: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
