Movies can be more than entertainment. In the classroom, they can be integrated into book study lessons which would encourage the reluctant readers to become actively engaged in fact finding missions (here’s one below by Rachel Lynette).

You can also check out this blog post by Jessica at Fifth Grade Freebies: The Move vs The Book. It’s a really fantastic collection of graphic organizers that were created specifically for comparing books to movies.

I’ve used the approach by Teaching Ideas in my class last year using the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs book and DVD. It was a very age-appropriate reading level for them and they loved the high quality animation of the movie. My students were really eager to read through the book, knowing that a movie version was next. The only problem was that they wanted more movies… ha! I couldn’t make any promises because as a teacher, I have so much work to cover. However, I was able to do it again at the end of the term with Disney’s Cinderella and one of our Cinderella books.