Pets! Pets! Pets!

     Last week I had my students work on persuasive writing. We read the book I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff. If you are unfamiliar with this book, you must find it and give it a read! It’s a beautiful mentor text for teaching persuasive text to students. This story is about a little boy named Alex. He spends the whole book just trying to convince his mom to let him have an iguana. He puts his arguments down into persuasive letters. He promises that she won't have to feed it or clean its cage or even see it if she doesn't want to. Of course his Mom counters each argument with a point of her own. She imagines life with a six-foot-long ugly iguana. Alex makes a couple valid arguments: It takes fifteen years for an iguana to get that big. He will save up money to buy lettuce. He will make sure it has clean water and clean it’s cage, and so on. The letters go back and forth until his mom finally is persuaded to let him have the iguana. We made a chart on the easel as we read along to highlight each reason and decide as a class if we think it’s valid (good) or poor. This is what we had on the chart:

Reason	Valid? Yes or No
The dog will eat it. Iguanas are cute and quiet. Keep it on his dresser. He’s lonely. Teach it tricks. Takes 15 years to get big, he will have a house of his own. He will take care of it. Teach responsibility.	Yes No No No No Yes   Yes Yes

     After we completed the chart, I told the students that in order to persuade (convince) someone of anything they must have VALID reasons. I then told the students that we were going to be doing something very similar to Alex in the story. They would be writing persuasive letters to me for a class pet of their own. We’ve had several stuffed animal class pets, but now it might be time for a real pet. I told them to think about valid reasons why different pets would be a great class pet and why I should buy them one. They came up with some very clever arguments. Here are some examples.

     I did lots of research over break, and even visited the pet store. As soon as I get the okay from my principal we will have a new addition to our classroom. A Mountain Horned Lizard. Here’s the little guy!

    
     If you are interested about doing a class pet in your classroom, check out my TpT Class Pet Journal Pack. It’s simply adorable and your class will love it! You can use the pages and print them to put in a spiral notebook or you can print the pages and bind them together separately.

 

Click on the title or the picture to purchase my product. Hope this is helpful for you. Enjoy and Happy Teaching!