Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Bad Seed will find this post helpful. It includes resource recommendations, free teaching ideas, and information about the book. You’ll have everything you need to deliver engaging interactive read aloud lessons based on this story.
With themes of mindfulness and feelings, this The Bad Seed picture book by Jory John is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. It will be a big hit in your classroom too! Learn more about this book below!
Engage Your Students with The Bad Seed Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Bad Seed. You can find it in the section below.
- Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
- Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with The Bad Seed reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE BAD SEED 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.
THE BAD SEED LESSON PLAN IDEAS
Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.
When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for The Bad Seed, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.
We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.
READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
The text-based The Bad Seed reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making inferences
- summarize / retell
- point of view
- identifying genre
- identify the mian idea
- cause and effect
- author’s purpose
- identifying theme | message | moral
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- mindfulness
- feelings
- perseverance / grit
- manners
- making good choices
- positive self-talk
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- pronouns
- verbs
- contractions
- commas
- punctuation
THE BAD SEED ACTIVITIES
You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:
- 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
YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?
BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for The Bad Seed?
- Lexile® Measure: AD390L
- Guided Reading Level: K
- DRA Level: 16 – 18
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.1 – 2.2
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Jory John. It was illustrated by Pete Oswald.
What genre is The Bad Seed?
It is a fiction book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.
How many pages are in the book?
The story is 40 pages long.
