 Whether it's elementary students learning that we only know Venture Smith's story because of the evidence he left behind, middle school students learning that a film's authors, purposes, and techniques influence that film's story, or high school students learning that they need to recreate a film's historical context to understand it. All of these models share some common core features. Use these features to plan your own lessons that deepen students' historical understanding and teach them how to analyze film as a historical source. First, use a short engaging clip as your lesson's centerpiece. This allows students to pay close attention to the entire clip and view it more than once in a class period. Films tell powerful stories. Multiple viewings help students analyze that story and how it is told. Second, before viewing the clip, tell students the date of its creation and why it was created. Source the clip for students so they can use this information to help them understand what they are watching. Third, learn more about the footage and the historical topic it addresses. This will help you plan your lesson and figure out what background information students will need upfront to watch and understand the clip. Fourth, additional sources are essential to each of the models. Ask students how these sources support, contest, or extend the clip's story. Reading and synthesizing these multiple accounts will ensure that students get a more complete and complex historical picture than a single viewing of the clip allows. Fifth, core questions for each source and for the overall lesson help focus and direct students' thinking about the clip, the sources, and of course the historical topic. And finally, when considering the goals of your lesson, get clear about what historical information students will be learning, but go a step further. What are students learning about the necessity of questioning historic film footage? What historical thinking is being demanded of your students? Skim all three grade level examples for help with this. Each targets different aspects of historical thinking about non-fiction film. Finally, use these five ingredients to plan lessons that not only engage your students, but also challenge them to become more savvy viewers of film and better historical thinkers.