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.
🌋 An underground world built for adventure. The characters descend through volcanic tunnels into a landscape of underground oceans, floating rock formations, and prehistoric creatures. The setting itself drives much of the movie's tension and excitement.
🦖 Prehistoric creatures around every corner. Dinosaurs, giant fish, and other creatures threaten the characters throughout their journey, giving the movie a strong sense of danger and unpredictability.
👨👦 A story about an uncle stepping into a father's role. As Trevor searches for his missing brother, he also becomes a steady presence in his nephew Sean's life, filling in gaps left by Max's disappearance and helping Sean understand who his father was.
📖 A modern take on a Jules Verne classic. The movie draws on Verne's 1864 novel of the same name, giving students a way to connect a well known adventure story to its much older literary source.
🧗 A journey built on following evidence into the unknown. Trevor and his companions act on clues and a scientific hunch that most people dismiss as impossible, and the movie rewards their willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
📋 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:
- Frequent intense adventure sequences and peril, including characters being chased or attacked by dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
- Two brief kisses occur between characters.
- No strong language or substance use.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. Journey to the Center of the Earth works well for ELA classes studying sequencing, narrative writing, and adaptation from a literary source. The guide's storyboard and synopsis activity has students illustrate and summarize key scenes before writing a structured synopsis, and a creative recount task asks students to imagine themselves as part of the adventure, alongside three sets of differentiated comprehension questions.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The multiple choice comprehension set works well with ESL and ELL students, giving them a more accessible way to follow the story in order without the demands of full sentence writing.
🔬 Science Teachers. Journey to the Center of the Earth is a strong fit for Earth Science classes exploring geology, volcanic activity, and the structure of the planet's interior, as the entire plot is built around a scientific hunch about what lies beneath the earth's surface. The guide does not include dedicated science activities, but the comprehension questions keep students engaged with these ideas as the story unfolds.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. With three sets of differentiated comprehension questions, a storyboard and synopsis activity, a creative recount task, and a word search and crossword all included, this guide works well as a ready to go sub plan when a substitute teacher needs a self-contained lesson.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. The mix of comprehension questions, storyboard and synopsis writing, creative recount, and word search and crossword puzzles makes this guide easy to adapt for a homeschool setting.
🔭 STEM Teachers. The movie's premise, built around geology, volcanic activity, and a scientific theory about what lies beneath the earth's crust, makes this a natural fit for STEM classes covering earth science. The guide's comprehension questions give STEM students a structured framework for watching.
🌟 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 15-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Three differentiated sets of questions in chronological order: 35 questions requiring full sentence answers, a shorter 25 question set with 10 questions removed from the full set, and 25 multiple choice questions with three possible answers each. The multiple choice set also works well with ESL/ELL students. Answer keys are included.
Part 2: Storyboard, Synopsis and Recount
A 9-scene storyboard has students illustrate and describe what they believe are the most important parts of the movie, followed by a synopsis writing task using the storyboard as a guide. A creative recount task then asks students to imagine themselves as Sean's friend on the same adventure, recounting the experience from arrival to the journey's end, including three drawings to help visualize it.
Part 3: Word Search and Crossword
A word search and crossword combination, with 10 crossword questions whose answers are the words to find in the word search, plus 5 additional words. Answer key included.
“My students were engaged with this activity and had no issues answering the questions. Perfect end of the year activity.”
— Tracy B.
“I used this activity to get us back in the groove after break and the kids enjoyed the activity!”
— Shannon M.
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.
