By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 18-page classroom-ready resource.
Three sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 58 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 40 question set requiring full sentence answers (18 removed from the 58 question set).
- 40 multiple choice question set with 3 possible answers each. The multiple choice set works well for ESL and ELL students.
Students answer five critical thinking questions for class discussion. Example answers are included.
This part covers two activities.
- A mind map covering personality, motivation, relationships, and a personal "movie to self" connection built around a growth mindset, for any character of the student's choosing.
- A 4 panel comic strip based on one movie scene, writing a new quote for their character, changing what happens in the scene, and ending the final panel with the word "YET" to represent learning from failure.
Students use the movie questions to guide sequencing.
- A 9 scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the movie, with a short description explaining the main idea each scene represents.
- A full synopsis of the movie, written using their 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.
⚖️ Puts a "cure" under ethical scrutiny. WCKD frames its search for a cure to the Flare virus as a mission to save humanity, but the movie shows exactly what that mission costs the young people caught inside it. Students see how a stated good intention can still justify harm when the people making the decisions never have to bear the cost themselves.
💔 Doesn't shy away from loss. The story follows through on real consequences for its characters, including the death of a longtime friend within the group. It gives students an example of a story that treats loss as permanent and meaningful rather than something a script quietly reverses.
🤝 Loyalty is tested under the worst conditions. Thomas and the remaining Gladers risk their own safety repeatedly to rescue Minho and protect each other, even when leaders like Vince advise against it. The movie shows commitment to other people as an active choice made again and again, not a one-time decision.
🏙️ A fortified, hostile setting raises the stakes. The Last City is heavily walled and guarded, and getting inside it means navigating protests, gunfire, and infected Cranks before the real mission even begins. The setting itself becomes an obstacle course that forces the characters to adapt their plan at every stage.
🔄 Redemption plays out on screen. Both Teresa and Gally get chances to make different choices than the ones that defined them earlier in the story, and the movie follows through on what that costs them. Students see change presented as something demonstrated through action, not simply stated.
📖 Closes out a story students may already know from the books. As the final installment based on James Dashner's novel series, the movie gives students who followed the books or the earlier movies a chance to see how the overall story resolves. It also works as a way to compare how a long narrative arc concludes across different formats.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Frequent violence includes shootouts, explosions, and large-scale fighting.
- Characters are attacked by zombie-like Cranks, including one on-screen infection and self-inflicted death.
- Two major character deaths occur in the movie's final act.
- Strong language includes frequent mild to strong swear words.
- There is brief kissing, with no other sexual content or substance use.
📋 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.
