Should We Get a Class Pet

What’s your favourite animal? Think about it. I bet you already have one picked out. How much fun would it be to have that favourite animal as a pet in the classroom? Have you thought about what it would be like? Would this animal be difficult to take care of? Is it a normal house-hold animal? It’s alright if it is not a normal house-hold animal like a cat or dog, and it’s alright if it is. Think about how fun and exciting it would be to have this animal  to play with at break times, take it for walks (or have it take you). Do you ride it around? Does it fly? Think of all these questions. Ask yourself more!
               

Your aim is to write a persuasive letter to Mrs Singh, asking her to adopt this animal as a classroom pet for Term 3. 

Step One: Choose your animal! Although you probably already have, keep in mind that this animal, if your teacher is persuaded, will live in your classroom.

Step Two: Research your animal! You will provide in your letter as much as you can about this animal. What kind of animal is it?

• Is it a mammal, amphibian, reptile, fish, bird? 
• How long is its lifespan? 
• Does it have babies or lay eggs? 
• How big does it get? 
• What does it eat to survive? 
• What is its natural habitat? 

Step Three: Begin your graphic organizer. These are the circle web graphs we do in class to organize our thoughts and ideas before writing that look like this! Fill in your ideas, opinions, and facts you think are appropriate that will persuade your teacher to want this animal in the classroom. You will find your graphic organizer in your Google Drive.

Step Four: Start your rough draft of your persuasive letter. Remember, a rough draft is just putting your ideas down into one constructive piece. Don’t forget to save your document as “step 4 (last name in Google Drive Pet Folder)”.

Step Five: Begin your first edit. Read through your rough draft and make all spelling corrections!

Step Six: Begin your second edit. Read through your first edit and make all grammar and punctuation corrections!

Step Seven: Here, you will go through your second edit and make a final revision. This is when you will catch everything else you missed and your writing should become perfect with no mistakes!

Step Eight: This is your published, final draft you will hand in to Mrs Singh. Before you hand it in, read through one more time and ask yourself if you really think this will convince Mrs Singh to adopt this animal as your classroom pet.

Step Nine: Print your final letter. Your letter should be black ink, 14 point font size, double spaced, Times New Roman, title alignment centred.   You need to insert an image acknowledging the site you have copied the image from.  Staple your graphic organizer to the back of your final draft and hand it in by Week 7 Friday 20th June.


You would probably say that a pet is too messy and our classroom is too small. You may be right, but I would say that we don’t need to have such a big pet like cats or dogs. If nobody has fur allergies, then we could get a hamster, rabbit or guinea pig. If there are fur allergies, then we could get fish, turtles or maybe even a lizard! To get money to buy a pet, we could make a (bake) sale, and if there’s extra money, we could donate it to the charity (SPCA)! Rules would certainly be set, and for the people who don’t want to participate, they don’t have to. The rules would be who and when takes care of the pet during the holidays.  If we should get a class pet. We could learn about the pet and connect it to whatever we’re doing, and we can learn to be cooperative, caring, independent, responsible and many more attributes.