By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 14-page classroom-ready resource.
Three sets of differentiated chronological comprehension questions covering the movie. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 40 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 question set requiring full sentence answers (10 removed from the 40 question set).
- 30 multiple choice question set with three possible answers each, which also works well for ESL and ELL students.
- A nine scene storyboard covering what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief written description for each scene.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using their completed storyboard.
This part covers two activities.
- A pair work activity in which students write questions they believe need answering for each character, then swap sheets with a partner and answer in role as that character, with the option to read answers aloud and discuss as a class.
- Character writing, where students write about one character of their choosing following guided question prompts and include a drawing of that character.
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.
🧩 Explores identity under pressure. Tris spends the movie grappling with who she is and what she's capable of once her old certainties collapse. Her struggle with guilt, selflessness, and courage gives students a concrete character study in how identity is tested rather than fixed.
🏛️ Questions authority and control. Jeanine's rule depends on fear, surveillance, and controlling information, and the movie shows what happens when that control starts to break down. It's a clear way into conversations about propaganda and how those in power justify their actions.
⚖️ Examines a society built on rigid categories. The faction system divides an entire city by personality trait, and the movie shows the cost of forcing people into fixed identities. Students can use this as a way to think about conformity, individuality, and what gets lost when a system refuses to allow for complexity.
💔 Shows the weight of loss and guilt. Tris carries real guilt over decisions made in the previous installment, and that guilt shapes how she acts throughout the movie. It gives students a grounded look at how grief and responsibility can drive a character's choices without resolving neatly.
🤝 Depicts an equal, supportive relationship. Tris and Four's relationship is built on mutual respect, with each defending and relying on the other rather than one simply rescuing the other. It offers a positive counterexample to relationships where one partner is defined only by protecting the other.
🎬 Builds on a bestselling book series. This movie adapts the second book in Veronica Roth's bestselling Divergent trilogy, giving students who've read the novel a chance to compare page to screen. It makes its own choices about pacing and character focus, which opens up direct discussion of adaptation decisions.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Contains frequent intense violence, including executions, shootings, and combat throughout.
- One scene implies a sexual encounter between the two lead characters, shown only through kissing and characters waking up together, with no nudity.
- Language includes one use of a strong profanity along with milder swearing scattered through the movie.
- There is no drinking, drug use, or smoking depicted.
📋 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
🌐 Social Studies 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.
