After reading The Bad Seed it quickly became one of our favorite children's books. This story is told with humor but teaches the important lessons of manners and acceptance. It is one of those books that can make a huge impact on our young readers and will leave them wanting to hear more. - Jodi and the Starts With a Story Team
SUMMARY
In the book, The Bad Seed by Jory John, the main character is a sunflower seed who considers himself to be bad. He does not use his manners and he describes all the ways that he is bad. The people in his community call him the Bad Seed and do not want to be around him.
The Bad Seed was not always a bad seed. One day he was picked to be a sunflower seed snack, was almost eaten by a giant, and then was spit out and stuck to a wad of gum. This caused him to be bad. At the end of the story, the Bad Seed decides he doesn’t want to be bad anymore and is ready to be good. He changes his mindset and self-talk and becomes a good seed. He works really hard on using his manners. He admits that it is hard but continues to try his best.
USE THIS BOOK TO TEACH:
The Bad Seed is a great mentor text for teaching academic skills as well as social emotional learning. Here are some of the skills we think this book lends itself to teaching.
- Discuss the cause and effect of the characters actions throughout the book.
- Identify the main idea of the story.
- Ask students to write their own story with a similar message.
- Integrate persuasive writing by asking students to persuade the character to be good.
- Teach a mini lesson on punctuation by introducing the the comma.
- Review pronouns and verbs.
- Discuss the importance of showing good manners.
- Help students understand what perseverance is.
NO-PREP PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES:
If you are looking for “ready to go” activities for the first day of school, be sure to check out the book companion. With it you’ll receive all of the following resources to align with this specific book:
- comprehension questions
- 30 writing prompts with themed paper
- vocabulary activities
- word study print & go activities
- ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
- social emotional learning discussion topics
- graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
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GET THE PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES
ADDITIONAL BOOK SUGGESTIONS
You and your students will also love these similar books:
- The Good Egg by Jory John
- The Cool Bean by Jory John
- The Recess Queen by Alexis O'Neill
- Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang
TRY OUT A SAMPLE COMPANION
It's hard to explain how amazing the Starts with a Story book companions are because there is just so much goodness included in each one. It's best if you experience using one for yourself. Sign up below & we'll send you an entire book companion to try out for FREE!
