Problem: I need a fun way to address manners with my class.
Solution: Badness For Beginners is a hilarious book about the Wolf family. Mommy and Daddy Wolf work tirelessly to teach their two wolf cubs to be bad. Your students will immediately recognize that the lessons Little Wolf and Smellybref are learning are exactly the opposite of what they’ve been hearing from adults all their human lives. From horrendous table manners to destruction of bridges, the Wolf family causes quite a stir in their community. It’s all irreverent fun for the wolves until the end of the story when their lack of manners has some natural consequences.
A fun reading response to this story is to have your students each make a page for a class book. My class wrote Badness for 2nd Graders. Every page featured behavior that was the opposite of what is expected at school. It’s a great back-door way of talking about manners and imagining what the school and classroom community would be like without them.
