By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 15-page classroom-ready resource.
Three sets of differentiated questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 45 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 question set requiring full sentence answers (15 removed from the full set).
- 30 multiple choice question set with 3 answer options each. The multiple choice set works well with ESL and ELL students.
This part covers three activities.
- A 9 scene storyboard of what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using that storyboard as a guide.
- Character writing, where students choose one character to write about and illustrate.
This part covers two activities.
- A map of Oz based on what they saw in the movie, including 8 key landmarks.
- The route Dorothy took from her arrival to the Nome King's Mountain, described from Billina the chicken's point of view.
“Return to Oz Movie Guide + Activities is a great way to get students thinking critically while enjoying the film. The activities are well-structured, interactive, and make the movie experience both educational and entertaining.”
— Margaret S.
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.
🗝️ Gives students a genuinely different version of Oz. New characters like Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and the Gump come straight out of Baum's Oz books, and none of them appear in the version most students have already seen. It works well as a comparison piece for classes familiar with the Judy Garland movie.
🧠 Puts a child's credibility at the center of the story. Dorothy is disbelieved by the adults around her and is nearly sent for electrotherapy to cure her memories of Oz, which gives students something concrete to react to about trust and authority. Her insistence on what she knows to be true drives the entire plot.
🐔 Follows an unusual cast of allies built for problem solving. Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and Billina the talking chicken each contribute a different skill to the group's survival, and students can track how the team works through a series of obstacles together. None of them are the friends Dorothy had the first time around.
👑 Builds tension around a villain who reshapes Oz itself. The Nome King has turned the Emerald City's citizens to stone and hidden them as ornaments, so restoring Oz becomes a puzzle Dorothy has to solve rather than a battle she can fight her way through. Princess Mombi's shifting identity adds another layer of uncertainty to who can be trusted.
💪 Shows courage functioning under real pressure. Dorothy keeps going even after repeated setbacks, guessing wrong twice before finding the Scarecrow among the Nome King's ornaments. Her persistence gives students a clear, low-drama example of resilience without needing a lecture about it.
📚 Offers a natural link back to the original Oz books. Because this story comes from Baum's own novels rather than a retelling of the earlier movie, it gives students a reason to treat the books and each screen version as separate creative choices. That distinction opens up discussion about what changes and what stays the same when a story moves from page to screen.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Dorothy is threatened with electroshock therapy by an adult doctor early in the movie.
- Several scenes feature frightening imagery, including a character who changes heads and a chase sequence through a hall of screaming heads.
- The Nome King and his rock creatures pursue the main characters in an intense extended chase near the end of the movie.
- There is no sexual content, strong language, or substance use in the movie.
📋 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
🌟 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.
