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.
🎷 Jazz at the center. Soul is built around jazz, not just as a backdrop but as a way of understanding Joe's life, his identity, and what he thinks will make him happy. The movie portrays jazz performance and culture with genuine care, and the original score by Jon Batiste gives students a sense of what this music actually sounds like and feels like.
🌟 A story about purpose, not just dreams. Joe spends the movie chasing a dream he has held since childhood. What Soul does with that premise is more complicated than a straightforward inspiration story: it asks whether a single passion is enough, and whether Joe's obsession with jazz has cost him something. That tension gives the movie genuine depth for older elementary and middle school students.
💙 Big themes made accessible. The movie handles questions about life, death, and meaning in a way that is imaginative rather than heavy. The Great Before and the Great Beyond give the movie a fantastical structure that makes philosophical ideas easy to engage with, while the humor keeps it from feeling like a lecture.
👨👩👦 Strong character relationships. Joe's relationship with his mother, his circle of jazz musicians, and his unlikely bond with 22 all carry emotional weight. The movie uses those relationships to show what Joe has been taking for granted, and students across a range of ages can connect with the idea of not seeing what is right in front of you.
🎨 Visually inventive animation. The contrast between the detailed, textured realism of New York City and the abstract, pastel geometry of the Great Before gives the movie a visual range that is worth paying attention to. The design choices are deliberate, and students with an interest in animation or visual storytelling have a lot to look at.
🏅 Award-winning Pixar storytelling. Soul won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score in 2021. It was also a Golden Globe winner. For students, that context can be a useful entry point into conversations about what makes a story resonate.
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:
- Themes of death and the afterlife are central to the plot and handled directly, though without graphic content.
- Mild insult language including 'idiot,' 'imbecile,' and 'you ruin everything.' One use of 'crap.'
- No sexual content, no substances, no significant violence beyond the opening accident.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. Soul is a strong fit for ELA classes exploring theme, character motivation, and the idea of what makes a story meaningful. The guide supports a range of writing objectives, from character analysis and creative writing through to a full synopsis task, with differentiated comprehension question sets for mixed-ability classes.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The multiple choice comprehension questions work well with ESL and ELL students, offering structured support for vocabulary and comprehension without requiring extended written responses. The visual and narrative clarity of the movie, with its strong imagery and relatively straightforward emotional arc, also makes it accessible for language learners.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. The guide is self-contained and easy to hand to a substitute. Students work through the comprehension questions independently during the movie, with additional activities in Part 2 to complete afterward. No prior teaching context is required.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. Soul works well for homeschool use across a wide age range. The differentiated question sets allow the same movie to be used with different learners, and the writing and storyboard activities in Part 2 give students a varied set of tasks to complete around the viewing.
💙 SEL Teachers. Soul is directly relevant to SEL themes: purpose, self-awareness, the relationship between ambition and wellbeing, and appreciating what you have. Joe's journey maps closely onto discussions about what motivates us and what we overlook when we are focused on a single goal. The guide does not include dedicated SEL activities, but the comprehension questions give students a structured engagement with the story, and the character writing task in Part 2 invites reflection on who Joe is and what drives him.
🎵 Music Teachers. Soul is built around jazz music and the life of a working musician, making it a natural choice for Music classes exploring musical culture, the pursuit of a craft, or the personal significance of music in someone's life. The guide does not include music-specific activities, but the comprehension questions keep students accountable during the viewing and provide a structured record of the story they have watched.
🌟 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 question sets in chronological order: 40 questions requiring full sentence answers, a 30-question version (10 removed from the full set), and 30 multiple choice questions with three possible answers each. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
Part 2: Favorite character writing, word search, storyboard and synopsis.
Four activities to complete after viewing. Students write about their favorite character, describing their personality, what they liked and disliked, and drawing them. A word search includes 15 hidden words, with 5 clue questions to answer before searching. A 9-scene storyboard asks students to draw and describe what they consider the most important moments in the movie. Finally, students use their completed storyboard as a guide to write a synopsis of the movie.
“Nice resource. It's a great resource and I was able to tweak it to work with my special education students. Thank you so much!”
— Tonya R.
“Great resource to use when I showed this during our social skills class. This helped the students to some interesting insights ”
— Christopher B.
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.
