By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 16-page classroom-ready resource.
Three sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order, for use with different ability levels. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 50 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 35 question set requiring full sentence answers (15 removed from the 50-question set).
- 35 multiple choice question set with 3 possible answers each.
This part covers two activities. Example answers are included for the discussion questions.
- Five critical thinking questions for class discussion, which could also work well in pairs.
- A character mind map, where students choose a character, write their name and draw their face in the center bubble, and fill in surrounding bubbles with words or drawings based on the given prompts.
Students use the movie questions to guide sequencing.
- A nine scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the movie, with each scene including a short description of the main idea it represents.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using their completed storyboards as a guide.
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 modern sequel to a classic story. Hook takes J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy and imagines what would happen if Peter Pan grew up and forgot who he was. Students who know the original story or the 1953 animated version have a ready comparison point, since this movie treats Neverland and its characters as a continuation rather than a retelling.
💼 An adult who has lost his sense of play. Peter Banning is introduced as a workaholic who misses his son's baseball game and snaps at his kids during a work call. His arc from distracted father back to someone who remembers how to imagine and how to be present gives students a clear character transformation to track across the movie.
⚔️ Old rivalries and a return to Neverland. Captain Hook has waited years for a rematch with Peter Pan, and his plan to win by turning Peter's own son against him raises the stakes beyond a simple good versus evil fight. Students can examine what Hook is after and why defeating an aged, forgetful Peter does not satisfy him.
🧑🤝🧑 The Lost Boys and what it means to belong. Peter has to be retrained and reaccepted by the Lost Boys, now led by Rufio, before he can be trusted to fight Hook. The group's initial mockery and eventual loyalty give students material to think about how belonging is earned rather than assumed.
👨👧👦 A father and son working through hurt. Peter's son Jack begins to side with Hook after feeling let down by his father's broken promises, and the movie spends real time on that rift before resolving it. It is a concrete example of how children respond to feeling unseen, and how trust gets rebuilt.
✨ A close to the story about choosing to grow up. By the end, Peter chooses to return to his real life and his family rather than remain in Neverland, having recovered both his memory and his sense of wonder. The movie's final message, that living itself can be an adventure, gives students something concrete to discuss about growing up without losing yourself.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Includes sword fighting and gunfire in which several pirates are killed on screen.
- Captain Hook threatens suicide with a gun, and the shot misses him.
- A main character is fatally stabbed and dies in Peter's arms.
- Mild language is used throughout, including 'ass', 'hell', and one use of 'bitch'.
- One adult character drinks a large glass of whiskey and stumbles.
- There is no sexual content beyond brief innuendo and a kiss between characters.
📋 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
Click your subject below to see how this guide supports it:
📚 English Language Arts Teachers
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons
🏠 Homeschool Parents
💙 SEL Teachers
🌟 Supporting All Learners A movie gives students a story to follow, and the guide gives them questions to work through as they watch. For students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities, that combination provides a clear focus for the lesson and a concrete way to show understanding. The format can be useful in special education and learning support classrooms, where teachers need activities that give students a defined task during viewing. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
Watching 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 you can grade: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
