By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 15-page classroom-ready resource.
Three sets of chronological comprehension questions. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 35 full sentence question set.
- 25 question version, shortened.
- 24 question multiple choice set with one written response, which also works well for younger grades and ESL/ELL students.
- A nine scene storyboard of what they consider the most important moments in the movie, with a brief description for each scene.
- A full synopsis of the plot, written using that storyboard.
Students design their own board game inspired by Zathura, naming it, writing the instructions, and illustrating it.
A crossword with 10 clues and a word search with those 10 answers plus 5 additional words. An answer key is included.
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.
🚀 Turns Sibling Conflict Into the Plot Itself. Danny and Walter's constant bickering is not background noise, it is the actual engine of the story. Every escalating danger they face only resolves once they start working together instead of against each other.
🌌 Delivers a High-Stakes Space Adventure. Once the house is launched into outer space, the brothers face a meteor shower, a malfunctioning robot, and a fleet of hostile aliens. The pacing keeps each new obstacle tied directly to a decision one of the boys makes.
🤖 Gives Students a Character Who Faces Real Consequences for a Bad Wish. The astronaut the boys rescue is revealed to be an older, alternate version of Walter, living out the consequences of a wish he made in anger to erase his brother. It is a concrete way to show students that words said in frustration carry weight.
📖 Connects to a Familiar Story Structure. Adapted from the Chris Van Allsburg book, Zathura shares its premise with Jumanji, another story where an ordinary game upends a family's reality. Students who know Jumanji have an easy point of comparison for how the same idea gets reworked.
🧩 Rewards Paying Attention to Sequence. Because the plot moves turn by turn through the board game, events unfold in a clear cause-and-effect order. This structure makes the movie a strong choice for practicing sequencing and following a chain of events.
👨🚀 Shows Fear Being Faced Head On. The younger brother starts the movie afraid of the dark basement and ends it confronting far bigger threats in space. His arc gives students a clear, concrete example of courage building through action rather than being told about.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Rated PG by the MPAA for fantasy action, peril, and some language.
- Includes mild language, including terms like 'dick,' 'ass,' 'suck,' and one use of 'biatch,' mostly used by children.
- Features intense sequences of peril, including meteor strikes, a robot chasing the boys, and alien attacks.
- No sexual content or substance use of any kind appears in the movie.
📋 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
🎬 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.
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.
