Core Skills Analysis
Language Arts
- Practiced listening comprehension by following dialogue, narration, and plot events.
- Encountered new vocabulary, expressions, and ways characters communicate ideas.
- Could identify story elements such as characters, setting, problem, and resolution.
- Had an opportunity to form opinions about the movie and support them with examples.
Media Literacy
- Observed how images, music, sound effects, and camera choices communicate meaning.
- Could consider how filmmakers shape the audience’s feelings about characters or events.
- Practiced distinguishing entertainment from messages, themes, or persuasive elements.
- Could evaluate whether the movie’s content and presentation were effective for its intended audience.
Social-Emotional Learning
- Could recognize emotions, motivations, and changing relationships among characters.
- Had an opportunity to reflect on how different characters responded to challenges.
- Could compare personal reactions with the perspectives presented in the movie.
- Shared viewing time at home, creating a possible opportunity for conversation and connection.
Tips
Tips: After viewing, invite the student to retell the movie in beginning-middle-end order, then choose one character and explain how that character changed or responded to a challenge. Discuss one filmmaking choice—such as music, lighting, or camera angle—and how it affected the mood. Finish with a short review that includes an opinion and two specific examples from the movie. If appropriate, compare the movie with its trailer, promotional materials, or another story with a similar theme.
Book Recommendations
- The Movie Book by DK: An illustrated introduction to films, filmmaking, genres, and movie history that supports discussion of how movies are created.
- The Story of Movies by David Parkinson: A visual overview of movie history and major developments in cinema.
- The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers: A playful picture book that encourages discussion of story structure, character choices, and how stories communicate ideas.
Learning Standards
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.2–RL.8.2: Supports determining a story’s central message or theme and summarizing key events, with expectations adjusted by grade.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.3–RL.8.3: Supports analyzing characters, their traits, motivations, and responses to events.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.1–SL.8.1: Supports participating in collaborative discussions about the movie and building on others’ ideas.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.1–W.8.1: Supports writing an opinion or review supported by reasons and evidence from the movie.
Try This Next
- Create a movie-review worksheet with prompts for rating the story, characters, visuals, music, and overall message.
- Draw a three-part storyboard showing the movie’s beginning, middle, and ending.
- Write a new ending or an additional scene for one character.
- Quiz prompt: What was the main problem, and which events helped resolve it?