Great Read Alouds for Persuasive Unit

We will be starting our Persuasive Unit next week. To prepare my students for the next unit, I always like to read several picture books from whatever genre we will be doing. This helps the students become more familiar with the genre and it also sparks some ideas for their own writing. Here are some read alouds that I plan to read...

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This book is about a boy named Joey who is left at home alone one night. He starts to see and hear strange things, but he has the superior wit to convince any and all possible monsters that his brother, Dan, is the better choice for dinner.

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This is a cute book written in which a young girl tries to convince her parents to let her get her ears pierced. I'll read it to the students and we can talk about the good persuasive techniques that the girl used, and what she could have done to let her parents pierce her ears.

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Alex just has to convince his mom to let him have an iguana, so he puts his arguments in writing. 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 Mom imagines life with a six-foot-long iguana eating them out of house and home. Alex's reassurances: It takes fifteen years for an iguana to get that big. I'll be married by then and probably living in my own house. and his mom's replies: How are you going to get a girl to marry you when you own a giant reptile? This book will have kids in hysterics as the negotiations go back and forth through notes. And the lively, imaginative illustrations show their polar opposite dreams of life with an iguana.

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This is the same author. Love her stories!

Ever since their baby sister came along, Alex has been forced to share a room with his little brother, Ethan, and it's a nightmare. Ethan always breaks stuff, snores like a walrus, and sticks crayons up his nose. No hardworking, well-behaved, practically grown-up boy like Alex should have to put up with that!

Writing letters to his mom convinced her to let him get his pet iguana, so Alex puts pencil to paper again, this time determined to get his own room. Though all of his powers of persuasion can't get his dad to expand the house, he does come through with a fun alternative-a tree house! 

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A second-grade class presents arguments for and against pet ownership.








    This is a great book about a boy who just before he is about the squish an ant, the ant talks to him! The story proceeds with the ant and the boy talking and the ant trying to get the boy to not squish him. The neat thing about this book is that on the last page, the author leaves the end of the story up to the reader! I have my kids write persuasively to convince the kid to either save the ant or squish it. I use this as a great warm up to writing persuasively.