By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 9-page classroom-ready resource.
Two full sets of comprehension questions in chronological order, built for differentiation. Answer keys are included for both sets.
- 30 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 multiple choice question set with three possible answers each. This multiple choice set also works well for ESL and ELL students.
This part covers three activities.
- Choosing one of the movie's pets, writing about it, and drawing a picture, including its name, pronouns, and possessive pronouns.
- Drawing and describing a pet they have or wish to have, including its type, age, size or weight, diet, and skills or quirks.
- Imagining getting a new pet and writing about the necessary purchases, daily care tasks, and weekly or monthly responsibilities involved.
“This was fun for my middle schoolers to have on hand to complete when having a movie day!”
— Despena Z.
“This was a perfect companion to the movie! Thank you!”
— Sarah Y.
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 the line between protecting someone and controlling them. Max's overprotectiveness toward baby Liam is challenged by Rooster, a farm dog who believes kids need room to take risks and learn from them. It gives students two clearly opposing approaches to caution and control to compare and discuss.
🌾 Uses a farm setting to force a character out of his comfort zone. Max is completely unprepared for rural life, and his discomfort becomes the engine for his growth over the course of the movie. It is a clear example of a character changing because his environment forces him to.
🐯 Includes a genuine rescue mission with real stakes. Snowball and Daisy's plan to free a mistreated circus tiger named Hu gives the movie an adventure plot built around standing up against cruelty. It is a straightforward, kid accessible example of characters using teamwork to help someone weaker than themselves.
🐱 Follows a character going undercover to solve a problem. Gidget has to learn to act like a cat, complete with training from a reluctant feline mentor, in order to retrieve Max's lost toy from an apartment full of cats. It gives students an entertaining example of a character adapting and learning a new skill under pressure.
🎬 Balances three separate storylines that all converge by the end. Max and Rooster on the farm, Snowball and Daisy's rescue mission, and Gidget's toy recovery all run in parallel before coming together in the final act. It is a useful example for students of how a story can juggle multiple plot threads without losing the audience.
🐾 Ends on the idea that change is something to face rather than avoid. Max's closing realization, that life keeps changing whether he is ready or not, gives the movie a clear takeaway without spelling it out in a heavy handed way. It offers students a concrete example of a character's arc paying off through a change in perspective rather than a change in circumstance.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Rated PG for some action and rude humor, including a scene where a character briefly threatens animals with a gun.
- One use of the word 'pissed' is the strongest language, alongside mild insults like 'jerk' and 'stupid.'
- A cat is shown acting high after eating catnip, played for comic effect, with no other drinking, smoking, or drug use.
- There is no sexual content beyond Gidget briefly fantasizing about a relationship with Max.
📋 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
💙 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.
