What an Anticipation Guide Actually Is
An anticipation guide is a pre-reading or pre-viewing activity. You give students a list of statements about a topic, and they mark whether they agree or disagree before they engage with the source material. It activates prior knowledge and sets up a purpose for reading. That is the basic mechanism. Nothing fancy about it. I have made dozens of these over the years, mostly for film studies and media literacy classes. The work is straightforward but it needs to be done carefully, or the whole exercise collapses into a generic worksheet nobody takes seriously.
Anticipation Guide For Nothing But The Truth
This is specifically about using an anticipation guide with the film Nothing But The Truth (2008, directed by Rod Lurie). It works for the 1975 documentary too, but the fiction film gives you more thematic tension to unpack. Below is a ready-to-use guide, followed by notes on how I actually run it in a classroom setting. Agree / Disagree statements: 1. The public has a right to know everything about their journalists, even private details.
2. National security should always override freedom of the press. 3. A journalist who breaks the law to protect a source is still acting ethically. 4. Patriotism means supporting government policy, even when you disagree with it.
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5. Media coverage can shape public opinion more than facts can. 6. Contempt of court is a serious crime that deserves punishment. 7. Whistleblowers are heroes, not traitors.
8. The press should never publish information that could endanger lives, even if the public deserves to know. 9. Political prosecutions are a real threat to democratic institutions. 10. Truth and loyalty to one's employer can sometimes be in direct conflict.
Students mark Agree, Disagree, or Unsure before watching. After the film, they revisit each statement and explain whether their position changed and why. That second pass is where the actual learning happens. The first pass just wakes people up.
How to Run This In Practice
I hand out the sheet, give students three minutes to mark their positions silently, then open it for discussion. The discussion usually gets loud around statements 2, 3, and 7. That is normal. I do not moderate too hard. Let them argue. The point is that they are already thinking about the themes before the film starts. After the screening, I collect the sheets again. Students rewrite their answers with evidence from the film. Some change their minds. Some double down. Both outcomes are fine. One thing I learned the hard way: if you ask students to watch the full film before doing the post-viewing rewrite, most of them will write vague answers because they cannot remember specific scenes. I now split the activity. Pre-viewing discussion happens first. Then they watch the film. Then they come back the next day for the rewrite. It takes an extra session but the quality of writing improves dramatically.
What Goes Wrong
The biggest problem is that anticipation guides become performative. Students flip-flop just to seem open-minded. I catch this when someone writes "I see both sides" on every single statement without any substance. I tell them to pick a side and justify it, even if they are uncertain. Uncertainty is fine. vagueness is not. Another issue: the statements can be too leading. If you phrase everything as an extreme position, students will either agree with everything or disagree with everything, and you learn nothing. The statements above are written to sit in the gray area. They should make people hesitate. A smaller but real problem: some students treat this as a politics quiz. They answer based on their existing beliefs without engaging with the film's actual arguments. I remind them that the goal is not to be "right." The goal is to notice how the film makes you think differently. That distinction matters.
Why This Works Better Than a Standard Reading Response
A regular response paper asks students what they thought about the film. An anticipation guide asks them to think about specific ideas before they see the film, then compare their thinking to what the film actually presents. It creates a built-in feedback loop. You are measuring change in thinking, not just recording an opinion. Research on anticipation guides is mixed at best, but the practical outcome I see in my own classes is real. Students who do the pre-viewing activity tend to notice more thematic detail during the screening. They are looking for confirmation or contradiction rather than passively absorbing plot points. It is a small shift in attention but it makes a difference.
Download and Usage Notes
I do not host a separate download file here. The guide above is complete and printable as-is. Copy it into a document, add your school header if you want, and print. You can also adapt the statements for different grade levels. For younger students, simplify the language. For advanced classes, add follow-up questions that ask students to research real cases like Judith Miller's imprisonment or the Pentagon Papers. If you need a version formatted for Google Classroom or a Learning Management System, paste the statements into your platform and add a simple response table with columns for Pre-Viewing Position, Post-Viewing Position, and Evidence From Film. That structure works reliably. One final note: this guide pairs well with a short follow-up essay prompt such as "Is the film's ending a victory or a defeat for the press?" Students who did the anticipation guide tend to write more nuanced answers because they already have a set of prepared positions to draw from. It saves grading time and produces better work.
