By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 14-page classroom-ready resource.
Three differentiated sets of chronological comprehension questions. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 45 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 question set (15 removed for a shorter option).
- 30 multiple choice question set with 3 possible answers each. The multiple choice set works well for ESL and ELL students.
- A 9 scene storyboard depicting what they judge to be the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using that storyboard.
This part covers two activities.
- A profile of a magical creature, either one seen in the movie or one they invent, written as an assistant to Arthur Spiderwick, including a picture of the creature.
- A second writing task covering the creature's habitat and daily routine, also including a picture of its dwelling place.
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 family adjusts to a major life change. After their parents' divorce, Jared, Simon, and Mallory move with their mother into a rundown estate none of them wanted to live in. Their differing reactions, anger, caution, and quiet acceptance, give students a real look at how siblings process the same disruption in different ways.
📖 A field guide becomes the key to survival. Arthur Spiderwick spent years documenting the magical creatures hidden around the estate before disappearing, and his notes are what let his descendants understand and defend against the dangers they now face. The movie treats careful observation and documentation as genuinely useful skills, not just background detail.
👹 A shapeshifting ogre raises the stakes. Mulgarath disguises himself to get close to the family and manipulate them, forcing the children to figure out who and what they can trust. His pursuit of the book drives the movie's tension and gives students a clear antagonist built on deception rather than just brute force.
⚔️ An older sister who takes charge. Mallory is a skilled fencer who repeatedly defends her younger brothers using real physical skill rather than magic. She offers a grounded, competent role model within a story otherwise full of fantastical elements.
👴 A great-aunt who still matters. Elderly Lucinda Spiderwick, initially dismissed by others, turns out to be essential to solving the family's crisis and understanding what happened to Arthur decades earlier. The movie treats her knowledge and memory as valuable rather than something to work around.
🤝 A reluctant son reconciles with his mother. Jared spends much of the movie angry and blaming his mother for the family's situation, but the story resolves with him choosing to stay with her and repairing that relationship. It gives students a window into a child's complicated response to divorce without oversimplifying it.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Goblins scratch and bite the children, leaving bloody marks.
- A tense climactic battle involves the family using kitchen items as makeshift weapons against goblins.
- Mild language includes words like 'hell,' 'idiot,' and 'stupid.'
- The plot centers on a recent parental divorce and includes a scene where a child learns his father has moved in with another woman.
- There is no sexual content, and no drug or alcohol 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
💙 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.
