🎬 Bring Christmas Classics to Life with Cine-Story!
- Cool English
- Dec 22, 2025
- 2 min read
Happy Holidays, teachers! 🎄
This week, we have a special Christmas gift for you and your students. We are launching a powerful new activity in our Video section called Cine-Story, and we’re kicking it off with two absolute holiday favorites: Home Alone and the 2018 animated The Grinch!
Cine-Story is an interactive storytelling experience designed to get your students speaking, sequencing, and predicting using real movie clips. It’s perfect for filling a whole lesson or as a quick, fun warmer to bring some holiday cheer to your classroom.
🎞️ How It Works: The "Rule of 4"
Each activity breaks a famous movie scene—like "The Snowman Prank" or "Late for the Airport"—into 4 specific GIFs/clips.
Whether you are unscrambling the timeline or predicting what happens next, the goal leads to one final challenge: The Retell.
Once the students have revealed or sequenced all 4 clips, they must put them together to tell the complete narrative of the scene from start to finish. This is fantastic for practicing oral fluency and narrative flow!
🗣️ Sequencing & Storytelling
To help your students master this, the activity concludes with a Sample Full Story.
After your students try to tell the story themselves, you can reveal this sample text. It highlights essential sequencing words like First, Next, Then, and Finally, allowing students to check their answers and learn how to structure a narrative properly.
🎮 Two Exciting Ways to Play
You can choose between two different game modes for each scene:
1. 🧩 Cine-Scramble (Sequencing Mode)
The Goal: Rebuild the story in the correct order.
Action: Students see a pool of 4 scrambled clips. They must watch carefully and drag them onto the timeline in the correct chronological order (1–4).
Teacher Tip: It includes "Easy" and "Hard" hints if they get stuck!
2. 👁️ Suspense Reveal (Prediction Mode)
The Goal: Describe the action and predict the outcome.
Action: The class watches the story unfold one clip at a time. Pause after each clip to ask: "What is happening?" and "What do you think will happen next?"
The Reveal: Click to reveal a text description to compare with their own answers before moving to the next frame.
📚 Vocabulary & Worksheets included!
We know you need more than just a game, so we’ve packed this with educational tools:
Key Vocabulary: Pop-up cards with clear definitions for words like "Mountain," "Heart," or "Scream."
Downloadable PDFs: Every scene comes with a printable study guide containing vocabulary matching, comprehension questions, and discussion topics.
🌟 Try it Now!
Get your students laughing with Kevin McCallister or learning the true meaning of Christmas with the Grinch. It’s the perfect way to wrap up the year!
Merry Christmas and Happy Teaching! 🎅
