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.
📖 Four distinct bedtime stories give the movie a clear, trackable structure. Skeeter tells stories set in a medieval kingdom, the wild west, ancient Greece, and outer space, with each one interrupted and reshaped by the children's contributions. Students can follow and compare all four across the movie without losing the thread.
✏️ The children's story additions are what make things come true. Skeeter tries to control the outcomes, but it is his niece and nephew's unexpected ideas that determine what actually happens the next day. That dynamic models how storytelling involves collaboration, negotiation, and surprise.
😄 A comedy that works for elementary and middle school audiences without adult humor. Unlike most Adam Sandler movies, Bedtime Stories is aimed squarely at younger audiences. The jokes are physical and situation-based, the language is mild, and the story is easy to follow, which makes it a reliable choice for younger classes.
🏨 A relatable underdog story running alongside the fantasy premise. Skeeter was promised the hotel manager's job as a child and has been passed over ever since. His ambition and frustration give the movie a grounded emotional center that students can follow even when the stories get absurd.
🌟 A clear message about imagination and authoring your own story. The movie ends with Skeeter realizing that the best outcomes came not from manipulating the stories for personal gain but from the genuine, unplanned contributions of the children. That arc is simple and legible for younger students.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Mild cartoony violence in the Wild West story segment, including gun play with no realistic consequences.
- Mild rude humor, nothing stronger than mild name-calling.
- Some kissing.
- No drug use or significant alcohol content.
📋 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. Bedtime Stories connects naturally to ELA work on narrative structure, story elements, and creative writing at the upper elementary level. The movie's four embedded stories each model setting, character, conflict, and resolution in a format students can identify and then imitate, and the guide builds on that with comprehension questions and an original bedtime story writing task.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The 30-question multiple choice set works well with ESL and ELL students, and the movie's clear visual storytelling, with each bedtime story playing out on screen as Skeeter narrates it, makes it easier for language learners to follow both the frame story and the stories within it.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. The guide is clearly laid out and straightforward to hand to a substitute with no additional setup. Students work through their chosen question set while watching, and the answer keys make follow-up easy for the regular classroom teacher.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. Two differentiated question sets with included answer keys keep the guide flexible across different ability levels, and the bedtime story writing task works well as a standalone creative writing project in a homeschool setting.
🌟 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 11-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Two differentiated question sets in chronological order: 30 questions requiring full sentence answers, and 30 multiple choice questions with 3 answer options per question. Answer keys are included for both sets. Students should pay particular attention to the four bedtime stories told by Skeeter, as these are covered in Part 2.
Part 2: Writing
Two writing tasks. In the first, students briefly recount each of the four bedtime stories Skeeter tells in the movie, with answers included to support checking. In the second, students write an original bedtime story in the same style as Skeeter's, with their own characters, setting, and story additions.
“Great to have students follow along with the movie, and to bring to literature circle discussion!”
— Amy P.
“This is exactly what we were looking for! Thank you!”
— Ashley B.
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.
