Pamela Wrede

Seventh Grade Language Arts

Dunn Middle School

Because of Winn-Dixie Unit Rationale

            Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo is a heart-warming story of one very special dog and the gifts he brings to his owner.  The story takes place in Naomi, Florida, the new home of ten year-old India Opal Buloni and her father, the preacher.  Opal feels alone in Naomi; she misses those she knew in her old home, Watley, and longs to meet her mother who abandoned the family when Opal was just a girl.  She has no friends and finds the adult-only trailer park she lives in to be very kud-unfriendly as well. One day everything changes, however, when Opal goes to the local Winn-Dixie grocery store to buy things for dinner—but she comes home with a dog.  The 180-page novel details the happenings of that summer in Naomi, Florida that Opal first brings Winn-Dixie home.  It tells of all the people Opal meets because of her dog, in turn making friends at nearly every corner. 

For the motherless daughter of a preacher, having Winn-Dixie in her life not only brings the comfort of a friend, but the confidence to get to know others and to let people in to her life that she normally would have kept out.  She befriends Gloria Dump, the African-American so-called witch with a jungle yard and tree full of bottles.  She also forms a companionship with Miss Franny Block, the elderly librarian and granddaughter of Littmus, the one and only creator of Littmus Lozenges.  Opal also gets a job at the local pet store, in turn warming the heart of the former inmate and guitar-loving Otis.One very special friendship occurs between Opal and Amanda Wilkinson, a girl whose tragedy rivals the sadness Opal finds in her own life.  Together, Opal and Winn-Dixie change the lives of nearly every person they meet and create a web of friendship that nothing—not even a thunderstorm—can beat.

            Three of the themes found in Because of Winn-Dixie are the idea of feeling alone, suffering with a complete lack of acceptance, and the longing for a mother-figure.  When Opal first moves to Naomi, she feels like she has no one.  Her mother left when she was three while her father is a preacher dealing with everyone else’s problems.  She does not know many children her own age either.  Not only is it summer time and school has not began yet, but she lives in an adult-only trailer park and the only children that go to her church are very young.  She feels isolated from the world and unable to find a true connection to or purpose in Naomi.  This loneliness combines with a longing for the mother she never really knew, the mother her father still loves and wishes would come back.  It also mixes with the fact that she thinks her father is a turtle who “always hides in his shell” whenever conversation gets personal for him or Opal.  She is alone at the start of the story and the longing that accompanies that emotion carries through even after she makes friends.

            There are a few minor themes brought out in Because of Winn-Dixie of which adolescent readers should be made aware.  Alcoholism connects a few of the relationships Opal has or had in her life.  Her mother had a drinking problem, one of the negativities that made her leave.  Gloria Dump also suffered from alcohol abuse earlier in her life.  The tree in her yard filled with bottles represents all of the sins she committed and she hung the bottles there as a reminder to keep the ghosts away.  Justice, human rights and violence go hand in hand in the story as well.  Otis was arrested for playing his guitar in public and was placed in jail after he punched one of the arresting officers.  His unfortunate loss of control and the unfairness of the initial arrest challenge the United States law and justice system and raise the question of human rights.  One final secondary idea in Because of Winn-Dixie is the concept of pathological fears.  Winn-Dixie has a severe phobia for thunderstorms, a fear that could affect the relationship between Opal and her dog in Winn-Dixie gets scared enough to run away during a storm.  Overcoming phobias and/or helping those one loves who suffer with pathological fears is a key part to Opal and Winn-Dixie’s triumphant story.     

            The most important theme throughout Winn-Dixie is the concept of friendship.  Winn-Dixie is the first friend Opal makes in Naomi after she and her father moved from Watley.  After she allows herself to warm up to the dog, she is then able to meet and bond with various people in the town.  She befriends a former convict, an African-American women known as the “witch,” the old and kooky librarian, a babyish five-year-old, pinch-faced Amanda, and even the Dewberry twins—Opal’s torturers from her first day in Naomi.  Making friends and allowing oneself to open up to others from which one is different is the lesson central to Winn-Dixie and the message author Kate DiCamillo intends to stay with the reader long after the novel ends.  Our unit highlights the theme of friendship with discussion questions, “To Think About” questions, and activities.  There is a Character Web as one of the enhancement activities that thoroughly maps out the relationships of the characters in correlation to one another and Winn-Dixie in particular.  During our Literature Circles, the Passage Picker’s job is to find passages from the text directly related to friendship.

            For seventh grade middle school students, feeling a lack of acceptance is almost a way of life.  Even the most seemingly self-assured student finds times when he or she just does not belong.  For many seventh graders, making friends and keeping them is a top priority, but not an easy task.  At the age of thirteen, adolescents can be very mean and heartless towards one another, leaving someone out or belittling another to make themselves look better.  This novel shows students how sad and lonely life is without friends or a family bond, allowing them to understand or identify with Opal’s situation in contrast to their own similar situation at some point in time.     

            Because of Winn-Dixie may be a juvenile text, but its message is powerful.  In order to get this across to students, however, three very important dense questions must be asked of them.  Burke describes dense questions as those that combine three areas (text, reader, and either other literature or the world) in a deep and provocative manner.  Three big questions for Winn-Dixie could be:

1.      In relation to Holes, what similarities do you see between Opal and Stanley Yelnats?  Of these two literary characters, which do you feel you relate to most?

2.      Opal describes her longing for her mom throughout the book.  How does this missing aspect of Opal’s life affect her ability to make friends?  How does this relate to the types of friends she does make in the novel?

3.      In your own experience, what issues exist today that make it hard for young people to find acceptance or friends?

These questions will open the minds of students to the extent to which they can connect the happenings of the book to other literature, their own experiences, and the world around them as well.  Finding a direct relationship between Holes and Because of Winn-Dixie is imperative since our classes felt so strongly about the first novel.  If students can draw a correlation between the two texts, their appreciation of Winn-Dixie may be greater.

            In the developing of a unit, it is necessary for teachers to include learning objectives, goals as to what their students will accomplish by the end of the lesson or series of lessons.  For our Because of Winn-Dixie reading activity unit, there are five main goals.  By the end of the unit, students will be able to:

1. Read silently on their own, sustaining their own focus and progress.

2. Draw connections between their personal experiences and those of the main character in terms of feeling alone, searching for acceptance, and making friends.

3. Comprehend texts on their own through the recognition of important vocabulary and the personal development of discussion questions.

4. Organize their understanding of the text through the use of graphic organizers such as story frames, character webs, Alphaboxes, etc, that guide their understanding of the novel from beginning to end.

5. Expand on their knowledge of the text through a creative writing assignment that calls on their abilities to predict and think creatively.

Unit objectives and goals are the driving force behind every lesson.  They are the result to which every lesson moves students to achieve.  Developing unit goals that are relevant and necessary is one of the most important tasks of being a teacher.

Although teachers in suburban settings teach Because of Winn-Dixie at the fourth or fifth grade level, our cooperating teachers decided this would be a great text for their inclusion classes to read silently and independently in class.  With only one classroom set of novels, students cannot bring the text home, therefore they must read a certain amount in Language Arts each day.  To help facilitate this self-sustained reading, Jackie and I put together a “Reading Activity Packet” and calendar for students to follow along with each day.  At the start of each week (the unit runs for four and a half weeks), students begin an activity that will carry them through Winn-Dixie for the next few days.  This is either a spelling unit tied into the novel, an Alphaboxes page to be completed throughout the week, literature circles, a story frame, or an end-of-unit creative writing assignment.  Each day, there are also questions that correspond with the assigned chapters that further the monitoring of student progress.