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.
🎈 An opening built almost entirely without dialogue. The first few minutes of the movie tell the story of Carl and Ellie's life together almost entirely through visuals. It sets up Carl's character and motivation before a word of the main plot is spoken.
🏠 A flying house as the engine of the adventure. Carl's plan to fly his house to Paradise Falls using balloons gives the story its central, visually striking idea, and sets the stage for everything that follows.
🧒 An unlikely pairing at the center of the story. Carl, an elderly widower set in his ways, and Russell, an enthusiastic young Wilderness Explorer, make for a mismatched pair whose relationship develops over the course of the journey.
🐦 A colorful cast of side characters. A large flightless bird named Kevin and a talking dog named Dug add humor and warmth to the adventure, giving younger students plenty to enjoy alongside the central story.
💔 A gentle exploration of grief and moving on. Carl's journey is shaped by the loss of his wife Ellie, and the movie handles that loss with care, giving students an accessible way to think about grief without it overwhelming the story.
🤝 A story about what people offer each other. By the end, both Carl and Russell have changed because of their time together, with Carl's gruffness softening and Russell finding the kind of connection he was missing.
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:
- An early wordless sequence touches on illness and the death of a loved one, handled gently.
- A storm, a house fire, and a confrontation with the villain's dogs bring some peril.
- A real gun and a tranquilizer gun are both fired, with no graphic injury shown.
- Two adults are briefly shown drinking champagne.
- No strong language is present.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. Up suits ELA classes working on sequencing, story structure, and the use of visual storytelling to convey character and emotion. The guide covers comprehension questions in chronological order, a storyboard task focused on sequencing and plot understanding, and sentence writing activities suited to a younger audience.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. Up's early visual storytelling and simple, accessible dialogue make it a good fit for ESL and ELL students. The guide's comprehension questions and sentence writing tasks give students a structured, low-pressure way to engage with the story's vocabulary and key moments
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. With comprehension questions, a storyboard task, sentence writing, and a creative activity all included, the guide offers enough structured work to fill a lesson, making it suitable for a substitute teacher to use with minimal preparation.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. The mix of comprehension, sequencing, sentence writing, and a kindness-focused creative task makes the guide a flexible option for home learners, particularly around themes of family, aging, and friendship.
💙 SEL Teachers. The friendship between Carl and Russell, and the movie's focus on kindness, patience, and connection across generations, makes Up a natural fit for SEL work. The guide includes a dedicated activity in which students write about and draw ways they could help senior citizens, directly extending the movie's themes into a real-world kindness task.
🌟 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 6-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Movie Questions
20 comprehension questions in chronological order, mixing long answer and multiple-choice formats, with 2 short paragraph questions at the end. An answer key is included.
Part 2: Storyboard
Students create a 9-scene storyboard illustrating and summarizing key events from the movie in chronological order, identifying the main idea of each scene while practicing sequencing and plot understanding.
Part 3: Sentence Writing
Students complete an acrostic activity, writing a sentence for each letter in the words 'Up Movie', then write sentences about moments in the movie where they felt sad, happy, and excited.
Part 4: Helping a Senior Citizen
A creative writing activity in which students imagine helping two senior citizens, describing two ways they would help, writing about the action of helping, and including a drawing of themselves doing so.
“I used this material "up" in my Community Service Club here at the school. I try to relate to helping the elders and people in need. To see beyond themselves and care for others. Thank You!”
— Gloria G
“This resource was incredibly helpful in breaking down complex concepts into easy-to-understand lessons. My students were engaged and excited to learn!”
— Teresa P
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.
