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.
🖤 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.
⚠️ 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.
📋 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)
Note for educators: Movie details and age ratings in this post are sourced from IMDb, Common Sense Media, and Wikipedia to help ensure accuracy.
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.
“Students had fun and stayed engaged with this resource”
— Fara N.
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.
