Because You Are My Teacher
Picture Book Read Aloud
book summary
Because You Are My Teacher is a delightful book that blends imagination with geography. A creative teacher shares with her class all the places, across the seven continents, they would visit “If they had a_____” (schooner, camel, helicopter, a river raft, hang gliders, hot air balloons, submarine, and other modes of transportation).
Through the power of imagination, the teacher takes the kids to visit places such as “the Atlantic where the great blue whales roam free”, “desert lands to see the ancient pyramids rising from the sands”, “tour the Amazon and listen as the howler monkeys growl their spooky song”, and “get a birds-eye view of the Australian outback and the large red kangaroo”. The teacher tells the class they would also visit volcanoes, Antarctic fields, China’s Great Wall, the Grand Canyon.
As you read the book aloud to students, make sure the kids are looking for the little mouse that makes an appearance on each page.
Each year when I read this book, it inspires students to learn more about some of the places mentioned in the book.
Because You Are My Teacher is a beautifully extended metaphor for what classrooms should be for students: a vessel for exploration, discovery, and inquiry. The beauty of this story is that the teacher is actually promising them that they could actually visit these places in their minds through the books they read and the learning they experience during the year. This book does a great job of capturing the magic that happens in classrooms each day.
suggested teaching point
Visualizing and Making Connections are just a couple of the strategies that you can teach students using Because You Are My Teacher.
On page 1, The narrator says that if they had class at sea, that they could see “great blue whales roam free”. Think about something else you might see if you had class at sea.
On page 9, The narrator says, “If they had a river raft, we would tour the Amazon.” I know that the Amazon is a rain forest. Think about something else the class might see if they had class in the rain forest.
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