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Sunday, September 28, 2014

Because of Winn-Dixie

Most of my teaching career has been spent in third grade.  I thought I’d never leave. However, I love a challenge and tend to get board easily so when a fifth grade opportunity came my way a few years ago I decided to go for it.  

So glad I did. Love the 5th grade mentality and independence.  One thing I thought I 
would have to give up was reading 
Because of Winn Dixie as a Read-A-Loud.  
I thought the kids wouldn't get into it.  

Boy was I wrong.  

In a year when I had a group of 5th graders that needed lessons on friendship (naughty group), I dusted off my class set and went for it.  To my surprise the novel lends itself even better 
to upper elementary.  I found there was so much more I could do with the class 
relating to themes and characterization.  

I beefed up my Winn Dixie 
Student Engagement Journal and Activity Unit 
by adding more textual/inferential questioning with an emphasis on citing passages or quotes that relate to major themes. 

As a pre-activity, students created a bubble map about their best friend.  The friend’s name goes in the middle, then adjectives that describe the friend, followed by examples.  

They looked something like this:




Although I generally do not like to show the movie version of a novel read in class, this segment of Opal and Otis in the pet shop, with Dave Matthews singing Butterfly, 
is simply gorgeous.

1 comment:

  1. I'm embarrassed to admit I've never read this book! I'm too busy reading all of your other great suggestions!

    ReplyDelete