Once in my English class

... or ONCE in my life. Any of these titles would perfectly suit the set of activities about ONCE (2007, Academy Award winner for best song) I have prepared for my 3º ESO students this year. You'll see it is a good bet: your students won't probably tell you, but in the end they'll love the movie so they'll also work on it with a little more enthusiasm than usually. The formula proposed by Irish director John Carney is very simple: two people, no more than 90 minutes, a few instruments and a bunch of good songs without a single false note. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova make the story quite believable, too.
First of all, you can work a silent viewing activity with the trailer. Then, taking into account the remarkable soundtrack, you can work with any of the lyrics. I have prepared a simple activity with the most famous and acclaimed song "Falling slowly". I prefer "Lies", for example, but you know that I seldom use my favorite stuff in the ELT class in order to avoid any possible personal disappointment. To finish with pre-viewing activities, you can give your students some pictures of key moments of the movie so that they can try to guess the plot.
I wouldn´t give the students too much work for the viewing itself because the movie has got a lot of things to enjoy (and they will, no doubt), just some questions to think about and comment after watching it. And at the end, depending on the kind of students you have, you may encourage them to shoot a video based on the story.
I've had a good time myself preparing the movie for my students and seeing the result.