By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 18-page classroom-ready resource.
Three sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included.
- 45 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 full sentence question set (15 removed from the 45 question set for differentiation).
- 30 multiple choice question set with 3 possible answers each. The multiple choice questions may also work well with ESL and ELL students.
Students use the movie questions to help with sequencing.
- A 9 scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the movie, with a short description explaining the main idea each scene represents.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using their storyboards as a guide.
This part covers three activities.
- A faith reflection page exploring what Jesus' life, sacrifice, and resurrection reveal and how these lessons apply to their own lives.
- A character reflection focused on Jesus, identifying his qualities, reflecting on a meaningful moment, and drawing him.
- A reflection on what it means to be a disciple by considering moments of faith and struggle in the movie and creating a symbolic drawing to represent following Jesus.
Students unscramble 10 words and answer 5 clues to find a total of 15 words or connected words in a word search. Answers are included.
“Perfect and easy to use resource to use after we watched the movie. Thanks!”
— Bolton's Boutique (TPT Seller)
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 visual companion to Dickens' own retelling. The movie is loosely based on Charles Dickens' The Life of Our Lord, a retelling of Jesus' life that Dickens originally wrote for his own children. Students get a visual companion to that story, framed through a fictional version of Dickens telling it to his son.
👨👦 A skeptical audience built into the story itself. Walter only agrees to listen on the condition that he can stop if he gets bored, and his questions and pushback shape how the story unfolds. Students see a model for engaging with unfamiliar material critically rather than being expected to accept it passively.
❤️ Compassion and sacrifice as the throughline. The movie centers repeatedly on Jesus showing compassion for people pushed to the margins, and frames his death as an act of sacrifice made out of love. Students see these values demonstrated through specific, concrete events rather than presented as abstract lessons.
🏛️ Historical context alongside the narrative. The story is set against the backdrop of Roman occupation of Judea and the religious tensions of the period, giving students real historical grounding alongside the central narrative. This context helps place a widely referenced story within a specific time and place.
👪 A father and son working through hard questions together. Walter struggles to accept the injustice of Jesus' death, and his father responds with age-appropriate honesty rather than avoiding the difficulty. Students see an adult modeling how to sit with a child's hard questions instead of deflecting them.
🐱 A framing device that keeps young viewers anchored. Walter and his cat Willa imagine themselves inside the story as it's told, giving younger viewers a relatable point of entry into events that happened long ago. Students follow the narrative through a character closer to their own age and reactions.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- References Herod's decree to kill male infants in Bethlehem, though the act itself is not shown on screen.
- Includes Jesus' flogging and crucifixion, shown largely off screen without graphic detail.
- Includes a scene of a Roman soldier's ear being cut off, which Jesus then heals.
- References an accusation of adultery against a woman, without explaining or depicting the accusation.
- Includes a brief illustrated depiction of Adam and Eve unclothed, with private areas covered by shading.
- Contains no language, drug, alcohol, or smoking content.
📋 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
🌐 Social Studies 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.
This is a faith-based guide, with reflection and discussion questions drawn from the Christian Gospels, making it a strong fit for Christian schools, church and Sunday school programs, and homeschool families looking to combine literacy skills with faith formation. The Social Studies fit comes from the movie's historical grounding in Roman-occupied Judea alongside this founding religious narrative; the guide has no dedicated Social Studies activities beyond the comprehension questions.
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.
