By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 12-page classroom-ready resource.
Two full sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order. Answer keys are included.
- 30 question set requiring full sentence answers.
- 30 multiple choice question set with 3 possible answers. The multiple choice set has also worked well with ESL students.
Students draw a profile picture of Winn-Dixie, describe his features and personality, then write what they like and dislike about him.
Students imagine they have adopted a new dog like Winn-Dixie and write about the responsibilities that come with it, including what the dog needs, daily chores, and any weekly or monthly tasks. Choosing three of the chores from their list, students then write a more detailed description of what they will do while carrying out that chore, with an example included.
A just for fun crossword puzzle with 10 questions whose answers become the words to find in an accompanying word search, plus 5 additional words to find, with an answer key included.
Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
🐕 Centers on judging people by kindness, not rumor. Opal meets several adults the town has written off as strange, only to discover real, sympathetic stories behind each of them. The movie repeatedly rewards her willingness to listen instead of accepting assumptions at face value.
💬 Gives real weight to a parent's honest admission of fault. Opal's father eventually admits that it was his fault her mother left, rather than protecting himself from that difficult truth. The conversation is treated with real emotional honesty rather than glossed over.
🍬 Explores grief and loss without minimizing them. Several characters, including Opal herself, are shown carrying real sadness from their past, a mother who left, a friend who drowned, mistakes made while struggling with alcohol. The movie treats those losses as something to be acknowledged and shared rather than hidden.
🎸 Builds community around shared vulnerability. The story's turning points come from characters opening up to each other rather than solving problems alone, culminating in a town wide party that brings previously isolated people together. Their willingness to be honest with one another is treated as what changes the town.
🌆 Follows a girl navigating a new town with no friends. Opal has just moved somewhere unfamiliar and has to build a social world from nothing, starting entirely from a chance encounter with a stray dog. Her path to belonging comes through curiosity and genuine interest in other people rather than fitting in on anyone else's terms.
📖 Adapts a widely read Newbery Honor novel. Based on Kate DiCamillo's novel of the same name, the movie gives students a visual companion to a book many will have already read or will read in an ELA unit. It offers a clear opportunity for book to movie comparison.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Mild language, including one use of 'hell' and some name calling.
- The movie deals with parental abandonment, alcoholism, and grief, though these are handled gently and without graphic detail.
- There is no sexual content or substance use shown on screen in the movie.
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
Note for educators: Movie details and age ratings in this post are sourced from IMDb, Common Sense Media, and Wikipedia to help ensure accuracy.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
Click your subject below to see how this guide supports it:
📚 English Language Arts Teachers
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons
🏠 Homeschool Parents
💙 SEL Teachers
🌟 Supporting All Learners A movie gives students a story to follow, and the guide gives them questions to work through as they watch. For students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities, that combination provides a clear focus for the lesson and a concrete way to show understanding. The format can be useful in special education and learning support classrooms, where teachers need activities that give students a defined task during viewing. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
Watching a movie is not a break from learning. It reaches students through sight, sound, and story at once, engaging the brain in ways text alone does not, and the structured work around it is what turns the viewing into a genuine lesson. You can read the research behind this on the Why Movies Work page.
- A Teacher Notes and General Directions page opens the guide with a brief overview of everything inside: what the movie is about, then each part of the guide in order with a short description of what it entails. You know what to expect from the whole resource before you hand out a single page, so you can pick up the guide cold and teach it the same day.
- Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets, so grading is quick and you are not rewatching the movie to check answers. Some guides also include example answers for the creative and written activities.
- Print and go: classroom ready, with no additional preparation needed. Print one the morning you need it and the lesson is ready.
- Substitute and first-timer friendly. A guide can be handed to a substitute or picked up by a teacher covering the topic for the first time. Nobody running the session needs to have seen the movie.
- Differentiated comprehension sets. Most guides include two or three question sets at different difficulty levels, and most include a multiple-choice option that works well for ESL and ELL students. One class set covers your strongest readers, your strugglers, and your language learners without separate prep.
- Activities that go beyond recall. Each guide includes structured activities that ask students to engage with the movie, not just watch it, ranging from creative and written tasks to discussion and critical thinking questions depending on the guide. That variety matters in a mixed classroom: a student who freezes on a written question set may show real understanding through a drawing or a creative task, and a confident writer gets room to go beyond recall. For the teacher, it turns a movie session into work you can grade: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
