The BFG (2016):The Fantasy Adventure Where a Kidnapped Girl and a Lonely Giant End Up Saving Each Other

The BFG introduces students to what it looks like when two people who are different from everyone around them find a way to rely on each other. Sophie is overlooked and alone. The BFG is the only giant in Giant Country who refuses to eat humans, which makes him an outcast among his own kind. The movie uses that shared experience of not belonging as the foundation for a friendship that eventually solves a problem neither character could have tackled alone.

The story follows Sophie after she is taken from her orphanage by the BFG to keep his existence secret. What she finds in Giant Country is a creature who catches dreams and blows them through children's windows while they sleep, and who speaks in a wonderfully muddled invented language Roald Dahl called gobblefunk. Together they devise a plan involving a specially made dream and the Queen of England to rid the world of the man-eating giants who terrorize the BFG and threaten Sophie.

For ELA classes, the movie connects naturally to Roald Dahl as an author study and to the novel as a book-to-screen comparison. The gobblefunk language is a specific and discussable example of how an author's word choices create character, and the friendship arc between Sophie and the BFG gives students a clear and analyzable structure: two characters who each need what the other offers, working toward a solution that neither could reach alone.

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🫙 The BFG catches dreams in jars and delivers them while children sleep. Dream Country is one of the most visually distinctive settings in the movie, and the dream-catching sequences give the story a logic of its own. The BFG understands dreams the way a craftsman understands materials, which makes his character more interesting than a generic gentle giant.

🗣️ The BFG speaks in Dahl's invented 'gobblefunk' language throughout. Words are inverted, mixed up, and recombined in ways that are deliberately funny and surprisingly consistent. 'Human beans,' 'whizzpopping,' 'scrumdiddlyumptious', the language is one of the most memorable things about both the book and the movie, and gives ELA classes something specific to work with about how words convey character.

👧 Sophie is not a passive character. She is frightened at the start and adjusts quickly. She pushes the BFG when he needs pushing, comes up with the plan to involve the Queen, and holds her own in a world where everything is scaled to make her insignificant. Her determination is what moves the story forward in the second half.

🤝 The friendship works because both characters need each other. The BFG is isolated and bullied. Sophie has no one who would notice she was gone. Their bond isn't sentimental; it's practical at first and genuine by the end. That arc from mutual need to real friendship is something students at this grade level can recognize and write about clearly.

👑 The Queen of England scene is a set piece worth analyzing. The BFG and Sophie's audience with the Queen is the movie's comic high point. The contrast between the BFG's scale and manner and the formal world of Buckingham Palace produces some of the best humor in the movie, and the scene turns on whether the Queen will believe what she is being told.

📖 The movie works as both a standalone viewing and a novel companion. Spielberg's adaptation is faithful enough that classes who have read the Dahl novel will recognize the story beat for beat. For teachers using the novel as a read-aloud or class text, the movie gives students a second version of the same story to compare and discuss.

⚠️ Things to be aware of:

• The other giants are human-eaters, and the movie makes clear that children have been eaten before, though nothing is shown.
• The BFG is bullied and physically harmed by the larger giants.
• Flatulence humor appears throughout and is played for laughs. No language, no sexual content.

📚 English Language Arts Teachers. The BFG is a strong ELA choice for classes reading Roald Dahl, studying fantasy as a genre, or working on character analysis and book-to-screen comparison. The invented gobblefunk language gives classes something specific to discuss about voice and word choice, and the friendship arc between Sophie and the BFG is clear enough for students at this grade level to trace and analyze in writing. The guide covers a range of writing tasks, from comprehension through to creative and descriptive work, with differentiated question sets for mixed-ability classes.

🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The guide is tagged for ESL and ELL students. The drawing-based tasks in Parts 2 and 3 are accessible regardless of English proficiency, and the character writing activity has clear, structured prompts that scaffold the writing without removing the challenge. The movie's strong visual storytelling also supports comprehension for students still building their English vocabulary.

🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. The guide is self-contained and requires no setup from the class teacher. The two differentiated question sets cover a range of ability levels, and the creative and character tasks in Parts 2 and 3 give students structured independent work to continue after the viewing. Elizabeth B. specifically noted using it as emergency sub plans.

🏠 Homeschool Parents. The BFG works well for home learners across the upper elementary range. The differentiated question sets give families flexibility to match the activity to the learner's level, and the dream-making and character tasks in Parts 2 and 3 make engaging standalone projects that connect naturally to the Roald Dahl source novel.

🌟 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.

Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Two differentiated question sets covering the movie in chronological order, both with answer keys included. Students can complete 45 full sentence answer questions or 25 full sentence answer questions, with 20 questions removed from the longer set for the shorter version.

Part 2: Creativity
Two creative tasks. In the first, students draw a dream inside a bottle and write who it is for and what it is about. In the second, students write and illustrate a plan for the Queen explaining how to capture the man-eating giants, including drawings to support their plan.

Part 3: Characters
Students draw and write about three characters: the BFG, Sophie, and Fleshlumpeater. For each character they describe what the character looks like, write about their personality, and note something interesting about their behavior, motivation, and what they like to do. Can be completed individually or assigned one character per student in a group of three.

Part 4: Word Search
A 20-word search based on vocabulary from the movie, with questions to answer for some of the words.