By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 19-page classroom-ready resource.
Three differentiated sets of questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 40 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 question set requiring full sentence answers, drawn from the first set with 10 questions removed.
- 30 multiple-choice question set with three possible answers each, noted as suitable for ESL and ELL students.
- A 9-scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the movie, with a short description explaining the main idea of each scene.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using the storyboard as a guide.
This part covers three activities.
- Two diary entries, one imagining the night of the bombing in the air raid shelter and the other describing their first day's experience arriving in the countryside.
- Character profiles for each of the four children, including personality traits, a drawing of the character, the gift each receives from Father Christmas and why it suits them, and how each child's personality changes while ruling in Narnia.
- Choosing one of the four children and writing a recount of a typical day as a ruler of Narnia.
“This resource was a great way to keep students engaged and aware of important details as we watched, and helped them more easily spot differences between the novel and movie.”
— Audrey C
“We used the 30 question version and I was pleasantly surprised at the collaborative effort my students put forth in sussing out the information. Some of them would miss a detail, and it would lead to a great discussion about the film and the story line. Great resource!”
— Melissa B
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 story that begins in the real world. The opening section, set during the WWII evacuation of London, gives the fantasy a grounded starting point. Students see ordinary children dealing with displacement and uncertainty before the story shifts into Narnia.
❄️ A richly imagined fantasy world. Narnia is built from talking animals, mythical creatures, and a landscape locked in permanent winter. The world-building gives students a strong visual and conceptual setting to engage with.
⚔️ A clear arc of betrayal and consequence. Edmund's choice to side with the White Witch, and what it costs both him and Aslan, gives the story its emotional center. The consequences of that choice are not softened or skipped over.
🦁 A central act of sacrifice. Aslan's decision to take Edmund's place is the turning point of the story, carried out without dialogue explaining its meaning in advance. Students are left to piece together its significance as the story continues.
👑 Four siblings who change over the course of the story. Each of the Pevensie children grows into a different role by the end, from displaced evacuees to rulers of Narnia. The movie tracks that transformation without rushing it.
📖 A well-known book brought to the screen. As an adaptation of a novel many students may already know by reputation, the movie gives students a concrete comparison point between a book and its screen version.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- The movie opens with a WWII bombing raid on London, including aircraft and explosions, though without graphic detail.
- Battle sequences feature swords, spears, and creatures in combat, with some characters injured or killed. None of this is graphically depicted.
- The White Witch turns several characters to stone and threatens or harms others, including a scene where a character is bound, taunted, and killed.
- A wolf attacks a character suddenly in more than one scene, which younger students may find startling.
- One character calls a sibling an idiot and selfish during an argument.
- An adult character is shown smoking a pipe in a couple of scenes.
- The movie includes Christian allegory, including a sacrificial death and resurrection, though this is not addressed explicitly within the dialogue.
- No sexual content and no substance use beyond the pipe smoking noted above.
📋 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
📜 History 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.
