Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysMy Girl Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Vada navigates friendship, family change, and loss during a summer of growing understanding. Explore how the film communicates feelings and what supportive responses can look like.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 1991
- Genre
- Coming-of-age drama
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 102 minutes
- Director
- Howard Zieff
- Screenplay
- Laurice Elehwany
- Based on
- Original screenplay
- Music
- James Newton Howard
- Featured cast
- Anna Chlumsky, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd & Jamie Lee Curtis
- Story setting
- Pennsylvania · summer 1972
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- A child dies following bee stings; the funeral includes a body-viewing scene and intense distress.
- A funeral-home setting, parental death, and repeated discussion of illness and dying.
- Puberty, mild sexual references, some language, and family conflict.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 6–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: Studio film information · Content advisory (spoilers)