By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 20-page classroom-ready resource.
Three differentiated sets of questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 52 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 35 question set drawn from the first set with 17 removed.
- 35 multiple-choice question set with three possible answers each, noted as suitable for ESL and ELL students.
Students use the comprehension questions to help with sequencing.
- A 9-scene storyboard of what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using the storyboard as a guide.
An extended creative writing activity for groups of 2 to 5 students, with detailed teacher instructions. Students choose tools, face daily challenges, and strategize to survive 5 sols until rescue, documenting each sol's events, strategies, and emotional responses in journal entries. Groups read their entries aloud after each sol, and the teacher scores the realism and effectiveness of each group's survival plan, with totals tallied after 5 sols to give a final score.
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 survival story grounded in real science. Watney's solutions to staying alive on Mars, growing food, generating water, managing oxygen, are based on real scientific principles, giving the movie an educational backbone underneath the drama.
🧠 Problem-solving shown step by step. Rather than skipping to solutions, the movie shows Watney working through each problem methodically, including the setbacks and failed attempts along the way.
😂 Humor that carries through extreme circumstances. Watney's wit and self-deprecating humor run through even the most dangerous moments, giving the movie a tone that balances its high stakes.
🌍 A global effort working toward one goal. Alongside Watney's story, the movie follows the NASA teams and international partners working to bring him home, showing large-scale cooperation under pressure.
⏳ Tension built from limited resources and time. Much of the movie's tension comes from Watney's dwindling supplies and the long timelines involved in any rescue attempt, giving students a sense of just how unforgiving the environment is.
🤝 A story about what people are willing to do for one another. The lengths multiple teams go to in order to save a single person give the movie its emotional core, without losing its focus on the science involved.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Strong language is used throughout, including multiple uses of the F-word.
- One scene shows Watney removing a piece of debris from his own body and treating the wound, with some blood shown.
- A brief, non-sexual shot shows Watney's bare body from behind.
- Several scenes involve intense peril, including a storm, explosions, and life-threatening situations.
- No drinking, drug use, or smoking is present.
📋 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
🔬 Science Teachers
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons
🏠 Homeschool Parents
💙 SEL Teachers
🔭 STEM 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.
