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.
🐎 One relationship holds together an entire war. Joey moves through British, French, and German hands, giving students a single thread to follow through a conflict that can otherwise feel abstract. Albert's search for him ties several very different wartime experiences together.
🤝 Decency shows up on every side. A German soldier risks himself to protect his younger brother, and a French grandfather cares for his ill granddaughter. A German private grieves the horses worked to exhaustion under his watch. Students see kindness portrayed as something that exists on both sides of a war.
⚔️ The cost of war is not softened. Soldiers are shown killed in action and executed for desertion. A major character is left with an uncertain fate after a serious injury. The story treats these as real losses, not background detail.
👁️ An animal's perspective reframes a human conflict. For long stretches the story follows Joey rather than any single soldier. Students experience the war's disruption through a creature with no understanding of why any of it is happening.
🔍 The reunion depends on memory, not luck. Albert proves the recovered horse is Joey by describing his exact markings from memory. It is a concrete example of a relationship's history working as evidence, not sentiment.
📖 A story adapted twice before reaching the screen. The movie is based on Michael Morpurgo's novel, already adapted into a stage production before Spielberg's version. Students who know the book get a direct comparison point across three different tellings of the same story.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- War violence includes soldiers shot for desertion, characters killed in combat, and a horse badly injured on barbed wire.
- A father is shown drunk on repeated occasions.
- Mild British language includes 'bloody,' 'bugger,' and 'hell.'
- There is no sexual content beyond a brief flirtation between teenagers.
📋 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
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. The movie gives an ELA class a multi-perspective structure to study, following one horse across several human perspectives that never otherwise intersect. Students build inference through the critical thinking questions, sequencing through the storyboard, and evaluative writing through the movie review. The differentiated comprehension questions keep the class accountable throughout.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. Joey's sections lean on action and imagery rather than dense dialogue, making long stretches accessible for ESL and ELL students. The multiple choice comprehension set offers a lower pressure way to show understanding.
🌐 Social Studies Teachers. Joey moves between British, German, and French hands, giving a social studies class one story that touches several nations' wartime experience. The movie also depicts the armistice and cavalry's obsolescence against modern weapons. The guide has no dedicated activity for this, but the comprehension and critical thinking questions keep students engaged with it.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. Hand this one to a substitute and walk away. Everything is organized with answer keys included, and a substitute can run the session without having seen the movie.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. War Horse opens up real conversation between a parent and an older student about loyalty and the human cost of war. The guide's comprehension questions, storyboard, synopsis, and movie review all work for a single student. The optional Book vs. Movie section suits a student who has read the novel.
💙 SEL Teachers. Albert and Joey, a German soldier protecting his brother, a French grandfather caring for his granddaughter, and a private who rebels out of grief for a horse he was never asked to love, give a class several distinct relationships tested by the same pressure. The guide has no dedicated SEL activity, but the comprehension and critical thinking questions keep students engaged with these relationships.
📜 History Teachers. The movie depicts specific WWI history, trench warfare, cavalry against machine guns, and the 1918 armistice, rather than using the war as a vague backdrop. The guide has no dedicated history activity, but the comprehension and critical thinking questions keep students engaged with this detail.
🌟 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.
Science is not covered by this guide. Social Studies and History both reflect the movie's depiction of World War I rather than two separate areas of content.
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 18-page classroom-ready resource.
Book vs. Movie Comparison (Optional)
An optional 2 page section for students who have read the novel by Michael Morpurgo, which can be skipped entirely for classes only viewing the movie. Students complete a prediction task before the movie starts, noting what they are curious to see on screen, then work through four further sections after viewing to analyze changes, character choices, and the movie's overall tone compared to the book.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Three sets of chronological comprehension questions for differentiation, a 45 question set requiring full sentence answers, a 35 question set requiring full sentence answers (10 questions removed from the 45 question set), and a 35 question multiple choice set with 3 possible answers per question. The multiple choice set also works well for ESL and ELL students. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
Part 2: Critical Thinking Questions
Five reflection and discussion questions encouraging students to analyze the movie's themes of friendship, sacrifice, courage, compassion, and the human cost of war, using evidence from the movie alongside personal responses, to be discussed as a class afterward. Example answers are included.
Part 3: Storyboard, Synopsis, and Movie Review
Students create a 9 scene storyboard illustrating pivotal events from the movie, with a short description for each scene explaining the main idea it represents, using the comprehension questions to guide sequencing. Using their completed storyboard as a guide, students then write a synopsis of the movie. Students also complete a movie review covering a rating, strengths, weaknesses, a recommendation, and a small poster design.
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.
