The Teacher from the Black Lagoon

For book talk I chose a book from a series by Mike Thaler titled The Teacher from the Black Lagoon. I specifically remember being read this book in a library class when I was in grade school. For that reason, I loved it. It's a part of a series with similar titles and themes. For classroom purposes, I really liked the idea of using it as a first day of school read aloud. Many students are often very anxious about the first day of school, I know I still get nervous before meeting my new professors in anticipation of if rumors are true. That is kind of how the book begins, the boy finds out he has Mrs. Green, she "is supposed to be a real monster." As the story unfolds, turns out Mrs. Green is a large green monster, and she does not hesitate to breathe fire or use special powers. The remaining boy, falls asleep in class and wake up to a pretty blonde teacher, "I'm Mrs. Green, your teacher." He realizes it was all apart of some freakish nightmare all stemming from his apprehension of what his first day of school would bring. There are a number of activities and things to gain from this read aloud. Students can easily connect to this story, they can make real life connections and share what they felt on the first day of school either in writing or sharing during class discussion. Also, there are a lot of characters in the story that are other students and other teachers; students can compare & contrast different characters and could even illustrate what they looked like. This story in particular could be used for students to identify beginning, middle, and end of the book. For a younger group, illustrating a favorite part, or creating their own scary monster teacher could be a good follow up activity.