The first time I taught this book, my class loved it. They laughed at Winn-Dixie smiling with all his teeth. They gasped at the thunderstorm. One boy asked, three separate times, whether we could get a class dog.
Then I collected their written responses and every one of them told me what happened. Opal found a dog. Opal made friends. Opal had a party. Twenty-four accurate, cheerful summaries of the plot.
I had taught a lovely book and assessed almost nothing, because I had asked questions the plot could answer.
What changed it was noticing that the book hands you its own tool on about page twelve. Opal asks the preacher for ten things about her mother, one for each year she has been alive. That list is not a bit of backstory. It is the thing the whole novel is built on, and once a class is working from it they stop summarizing and start explaining.
Here are the five activities I use now. All of them work with nothing but the book and paper, and every one of them produces writing you can actually grade.
1. Start With the List of Ten
In chapter three, Opal tells the preacher that since she is ten years old, he owes her ten things about her mother. He resists, then gives in. He does not actually tell her until chapter four, which is worth knowing before you plan the lesson.
The ten are wonderfully specific. Mama was funny. She had red hair and freckles, like Opal. She had a green thumb and could grow anything. She was a fast runner. She could not cook and once burnt water. She loved stories. She knew all the constellations. She hated being a preacher's wife. She drank. She loved Opal.
Have students copy that list on day one and keep it in the front of their reading folder, because it is going to do three jobs:
- It is a character list they did not have to invent. Ten traits with evidence already attached, which is exactly what you spend October trying to teach
- It predicts the book. Number nine explains Gloria Dump. Number three explains the garden. Ask students which items are going to matter later and let them be right
- It is the ending. Opal memorizes the list so she can recognize her mother if she comes back. What she does with it by chapter twenty-six is the whole arc
Kate DiCamillo has said she wrote the book during a Minnesota winter, homesick for Florida and wanting a dog she was not allowed to have. Reading Rockets has a set of free video interviews with her with full transcripts, and hearing an author describe missing a place is a good five minutes before you start chapter one.
2. Trade Character Adjectives for Character Evidence
Ask a class what Gloria Dump is like and you will get kind. Ask what Otis is like and you will get shy. Both are correct and neither is worth writing down.
The fix is a rule you can say in one sentence: a trait only counts if you can point at the page where the character earned it.
So the chart has two columns, not one. On the left, what the character says, does, thinks or feels. On the right, the word for it. Students fill the left column first, which is the part that changes everything, because now the adjective is a conclusion rather than a guess.
Gloria Dump hangs empty bottles in her tree so she can remember every mistake she made while drinking. That is the evidence. Honest is the conclusion. A child who writes it in that order has done literary analysis and mostly does not notice.
We Are Teachers has twelve character traits anchor charts built on exactly this idea, several of them using a says, does, thinks, feels frame. Pick one, make it big, and leave it up for the rest of the year.
Want to try the pages before you commit to anything? Send me the free two-chapter sample of the Winn-Dixie quick checks and run it with your class this week.
3. Map Who Is Lonely in Naomi
This is the activity that turns a sweet dog book into a novel, and it takes about twenty minutes.
Draw a simple map of the town on chart paper. The library. Gertrude's Pets. Gloria Dump's garden. The trailer where Opal and the preacher live. Then, as you read, students add each person to the map with one line about what they have lost.
The pattern arrives on its own, usually around chapter fifteen, and it lands hard:
- Miss Franny Block sits in a library nobody visits, telling stories to whoever comes
- Gloria Dump cannot see well and keeps her mistakes hanging in a tree
- Otis has been in prison and plays music to animals because they will listen
- Sweetie Pie Thomas is five and keeps inviting herself to other people's parties
- Amanda Wilkinson is the one they always get wrong
Amanda is pinch-faced and unfriendly for most of the book, and every class writes her off. Then you find out her five-year-old brother Carson drowned the summer before. I let students discover that themselves, and then I ask them to go back and reread their own notes about her.
It is the best twenty minutes of the unit. A child who has judged a character too early, and been shown the receipt in their own handwriting, has learned something that outlasts the novel.
4. Ask for a Theme Sentence They Can Defend
Theme is where novel studies usually go soft. Students write friendship is important, everyone nods, and nothing has been assessed.
Give them a frame with a second half instead:
This book says that ______, and I know because ______.
The second blank has to hold a specific moment with a chapter number. That single requirement does more for the quality of the writing than any amount of talking about theme.
The book makes it easy, because it hands you a perfect object. The Littmus Lozenge was invented by Miss Franny's great-grandfather, Littmus W. Block, after he came home from the Civil War to find his family gone. Every child who eats one tastes something sad underneath the sweetness. Ask a class why an author would put a candy like that in a book and you will get theme statements with evidence attached, from students who would have written friendship is important twenty minutes earlier.
If you want a model of this done formally, Rhode Island's Department of Education publishes a free close reading model lesson for this exact book, with student supports built in. Louisiana's Department of Education has a complete free unit built around theme and character change, with a culminating writing task you can borrow outright. Both are free downloads with nothing to sign up for.
5. Give the Friendship Party a Job
Nearly every class throws a party at the end of this book, the way Opal and Gloria do, and it is a lovely last day. It can also be your assessment, which costs nothing extra.
Assign each student a character to come as. Not a costume. A character they have to be able to answer for.
Then interview them. Who are you, what did you lose, who did you let in, and how are you different by the last chapter? A student who can answer those four questions as Otis has demonstrated character analysis, inference and theme, out loud, while eating something.
The detail worth stealing is the one from the book. During the party a thunderstorm breaks, Winn-Dixie disappears, and everyone goes out into the rain to look for him. He has been inside the house the entire time, hiding under a bed. Ask why the author put a lost dog at the moment when all these lonely people are finally together, and you have one more theme conversation without meaning to start one.
The two-chapter sample is a good way to see the format before the party planning starts. Grab the free Winn-Dixie sample pages here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What grade is this book for? Third through fifth. Third graders can do all five of these with more scaffolding on the theme sentence. Fifth graders can handle the loneliness map as independent work and write a full essay from it.
How long does the novel take? Twenty-six short chapters, so about three weeks at a chapter or two a day. You can read it aloud in less if you double up the shorter chapters.
Do I have to read it aloud? It is worth it. The voice is the best thing about the book and a lot of the humor is in the rhythm of the sentences, which struggling readers miss on the page.
What about the movie? Show it after, not during, and make it an activity rather than a reward. A book versus movie comparison is one of the few times students will argue about an author's choices without being asked to.
Some of this book is sad. Is that a problem? It has been my experience that it is the opposite. Children are already carrying things, and a book where an adult says plainly that Mama drank and left gives them somewhere to put that. Read chapter four yourself first and you will know how your class will take it.
One More Thing Worth Saying
The reason this book rewards character work is that almost nothing happens in it. A girl gets a dog, meets some people, and has a party.
Everything that matters is interior, which means a student who only reports the plot has genuinely missed the book, not just answered a question badly. Point them at the people instead and the writing changes within a week.
And they will still ask for a class dog. That part is not fixable.
If You Would Rather Not Build It From Scratch
Every activity above works with the novel, chart paper and a pencil. If you would rather have the pages ready, this is what I use alongside it.
The Because of Winn-Dixie novel study has one quick check for each of the twenty-six chapters, so the reading is covered without you writing questions at ten at night. The pages that matter most for this post are the character and theme reflection, the chart for tracking how Opal changes across the story, and the Character Talk Show interview, which is part five above already laid out. There is also vocabulary and word work, a comic strip book review, a book versus movie comparison for after the film, and answer keys throughout.
Please note that a copy of Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo is required and is not included. This is an independent companion resource and is not affiliated with the author or publisher.
Keep Going
How to teach The Lemonade War, chapter by chapter, for another novel that hides its real lesson behind a simple plot.
Teaching economics with The Lemonade War, for what happens when you teach one novel across two subjects.
