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.
🏔️ Shows what real endurance racing demands. Students see a multi-day, 435-mile race across mountains, jungle, and open water, with almost no sleep and constant physical risk. It gives a concrete picture of what extreme physical perseverance actually looks like, not just as a concept but as a lived ordeal.
🐾 Explores the ethics of caring for a vulnerable animal. Arthur is a stray dog showing signs of past abuse and neglect who attaches himself to the team mid-race. The team's decision to slow down and risk the competition to protect him raises real questions about what responsibility we take on when something vulnerable depends on us.
🤝 Puts teamwork and trust under real pressure. Michael's team includes people he has personally let down before, and the race forces them to work through old resentment while making split-second decisions that affect each other's safety. Students see what functioning teamwork requires when the stakes are high and trust has already been damaged.
💪 Follows a leader learning from past failure. Michael has to admit that his past arrogance and refusal to listen cost his team a previous race. His growth into a leader who prioritizes his teammates' safety over winning gives students a concrete example of humility changing an outcome.
❤️ Centers on a genuine emotional bond, not a manufactured one. The connection between Michael and Arthur develops gradually through shared hardship rather than being introduced as an instant plot device. Students can track how trust between a person and an animal is built through specific actions over time.
🏆 Raises the question of what winning is actually worth. Faced with the choice between finishing first and saving Arthur's life, the team gives up their lead. It is a clear, concrete scenario for students to weigh competition against compassion.
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:
- Contains one use of a strong profanity and frequent use of milder language throughout.
- A dog shows visible wounds and effects of past abuse and neglect, though no abuse is shown on screen.
- Adults are shown drinking beer to relax.
- No sexual content is present.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. Arthur the King is built from a real memoir with a clear structure worth studying, a flawed protagonist, a setup built on past failure, and a resolution that turns on a difficult choice. The guide is built for ELA, with comprehension work at different difficulty levels and writing tasks that push students beyond simple recall.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The dialogue in Arthur the King stays grounded in plain, direct language even during high-stakes moments, which keeps it accessible without watering down the stakes. The guide's multiple choice questions work well for ESL and ELL students building comprehension at their own pace.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. Hand this one to a substitute and walk away. Everything needed is included, with organized materials and answer keys for the comprehension question sets, so a sub can run the session without having seen the movie.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. Arthur the King works well for a home learning session built around a real story of failure, growth, and responsibility toward another living creature. The guide's differentiated comprehension sets, storyboard, and creative writing task give a single student plenty to work through, and the news article activity in particular suits independent work.
💙 SEL Teachers. Arthur the King traces a leader learning to admit his own mistakes and rebuild trust with people he let down, alongside a team learning what compassion costs when it's inconvenient. The guide does not include a dedicated SEL activity, but the comprehension questions keep students accountable and engaged with these dynamics as they watch.
⚽ PE Teachers. Arthur the King shows adventure racing in real detail, trekking, rock climbing, biking, and kayaking combined into one continuous multi-day event, giving PE students a concrete look at what true endurance sport training and competition demand. The guide has no dedicated PE activity, but the comprehension questions give students a structured task to stay engaged with the physical demands shown throughout.
🌟 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 chronological comprehension questions. Set one has 40 questions requiring full sentence answers. Set two has 30 questions requiring full sentence answers. Set three has 29 multiple choice questions with three possible answers each, plus one final full sentence question. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
Part 2: Storyboard and Synopsis
Students draw a nine-scene storyboard of what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene, then use that storyboard to write a synopsis of the movie.
Part 3: Creativity
Students imagine they are junior reporters covering Team Broadrail's race in the Dominican Republic, bullet-pointing key events and writing imagined quotes from interviewing the team afterward, then use that material to write a news article about the team's adventure, including a drawing.
“Enjoyed this resource with the movie. It was helpful and easy, friendly.”
— Amy W.
“Thank you very much, students were actively engaged.”
— Kimberley K.
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.
