The Secret Knowledge of Grown Ups: A Classroom Read Aloud

Ahhhh holiday Monday? Yes Please! Where I live in Ontario, Canada, we have a holiday today called “Family Day”. It’s a nice way to break up the dreary month of February.  We did a little tobogganing in our homemade luge track, baked some cookies and watched a movie!

The kids are currently snuggled up with my hubby reading a book so this is a perfect time for me to write about one of my favorite read aloud books.

“The Secret Knowledge of Grown Ups” by David Wisniewski is such a riot to read to students. They get so in to the book! Last year I had my class convinced that this book was actually real!

The book takes simple grown up rules like, “Eat your veggies or you won’t get to be big and strong” and creates an alternate secret reason for why grown ups actually want you to do things. It’s quite humorous and lends itself to some great writing activities as well.  Click on the image above to read more about this book.

After reading the book I have my students create their own secret rules in their writer’s notebooks. Then we share them as a class.

I always have a coworker enter the room (set up prior to the lesson) as we are reading both the book and the student rules after and we make a big deal of being secretive about what we are doing. I have the teacher really probe the students to find out what they are writing about and the students get a great kick out of getting to be top secret!

I hope your students enjoy this book as much as mine!

Well, gotta take those cookies out of the oven and enjoy some more Family Day time.

I’m linking up with Paula’s Place for Story Book Sunday…even though it’s Monday and also Teaching Maddeness for Must Read Monday

To check out more great stories click on the image below: