By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
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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.
🖤 Wednesday refuses to perform happiness on demand. When Camp Chippewa's counselors try to force Wednesday and Pugsley into cheerful conformity, Wednesday holds her ground instead of caving to fit in. Students get a sharp example of a character resisting social pressure rather than folding to it.
🏕️ The summer camp plot skewers forced positivity. Camp Chippewa runs on relentless cheer, matching outfits, and group singalongs, and the movie treats all of it as slightly sinister rather than wholesome. It gives students a funny, recognizable target for discussing conformity and peer pressure in their own social worlds.
👨👩👧👦 The Addams parents never try to change their kids. Gomez and Morticia love Wednesday and Pugsley exactly as they are, gruesome hobbies and all, and never push them toward being more normal. That unconditional acceptance stands in sharp contrast to the camp counselors and gives students something to notice about what real support looks like.
🎭 The Thanksgiving pageant becomes a full-blown rebellion. Cast as Pocahontas in the camp's saccharine Thanksgiving play, Wednesday instead leads the other outcast campers in tearing the performance apart. It is one of the movie's most memorable set pieces and a clear payoff for the outsider versus conformity thread running through the camp scenes.
😂 The comedy stays dark without losing its warmth. The Addams family's morbid humor runs through nearly every scene, but the family itself is loving and tight-knit underneath it. Students get comedy that is genuinely funny while the family relationships stay sincere.
🃏 Debbie Jellinsky gives the movie a memorable, comic villain. Joan Cusack plays Debbie as chipper on the surface and calculating underneath, marrying rich men for their fortunes. Her scheme against Uncle Fester gives the plot outside the camp storyline real stakes and comic tension of its own.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Wednesday and Pugsley repeatedly attempt to kill their baby brother Pubert in slapstick, non-graphic ways played entirely for comedy.
- The movie includes comedic violence throughout, including an attempted electrocution and an attempted bombing, none of it graphic.
- There is brief sexual innuendo and dialogue referencing virginity, along with a scene showing mild cleavage.
- A cat is buried alive off-screen and an eagle is shot in one comedic scene.
- No strong language and no drug use beyond characters drinking wine and champagne at social occasions.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. This guide gives ELA classes a full range of writing tasks built around the movie, including a 9-scene storyboard with descriptions, a synopsis written from that storyboard, and character and diary writing from the perspective of Wednesday or Pugsley at summer camp. Three differentiated sets of comprehension questions let a teacher match the reading and writing demand to different classes or ability levels within the same room.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. Teachers searching for accessible movies for English learners will find this a strong fit. The guide's 30-question multiple choice set was built with ESL and ELL students in mind, giving them a structured way to follow the plot without the heavier demand of full sentence responses required by the other two question sets.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. Hand it to a sub and walk away. The three sets of comprehension questions, storyboard task, and character and diary writing prompts are all self-contained with clear instructions, and answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets. A substitute can run the entire session without having seen the movie.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. Addams Family Values works well for a single home learner, especially one who enjoys dark humor or is drawn to characters who do not follow the crowd. The guide's storyboard, synopsis, and character and diary writing tasks give a homeschool parent a ready-made sequence of independent work to pair with watching the movie, without needing a group activity to make it function.
🌟 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 14-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Three differentiated sets of questions in chronological order: 40 full sentence questions, a shorter 30 question version, and a 30 question multiple choice set well suited to ESL and ELL students. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
Part 2: Storyboard and Synopsis
Students draw a 9-scene storyboard of what they consider the movie's most important moments, with a brief description for each scene, then use that storyboard to write a synopsis of the movie.
Part 3: Character and Diary Writing
Students choose an Addams Family character and write about them following guided prompts, including a drawing of the character, then write three short diary entries from the perspective of Wednesday or Pugsley during their time at summer camp.
What Makes This Guide Different
A generic set of movie questions asks every student the same thing in the same format. This guide does not. Three full tiers of comprehension questions, at three different demand levels, mean a teacher can hand out the right version to the right student without writing a second worksheet or scrambling to accommodate a mixed-ability class the night before.
The guide also does not stop at comprehension. It builds toward original work: students plan their own storyboard of the story's key scenes, turn that plan into a written synopsis in their own words, then step into a character's perspective through profile and diary writing. That is a real skill progression from guided recall to independent composition, not a pile of unrelated worksheets bundled together. With full answer keys included for every comprehension set, a teacher can also assign any part of it cold, without pre-watching or pre-grading prep.
Mr Hull's Movie Guides has been creating classroom-ready movie resources since 2017. Browse 390+ guides covering movies for every grade level, subject, and occasion at the Mr Hull's Movie Guides TPT Store.
