Green Heroes: K-5 Teaching Units: How Do Young People Become Environmental Heroes?

Green Heroes is one in a series of Green Literacy Thematic Teaching Units, organized around the 3 Cycles of Comprehension, explicitly so for grades 3-4, and 5, and beyond. They are aligned to the Common Core State Standards. We model how teachers and students can use these texts and digital media as catalysts for critical dialogues and hopefully action toward earth stewardship. Teachers and students reflect that effective action taken toward educating young people includes how solutions work to change systems, including unjust systems like those of race, class, and gender and use of natural resources.


About the Author
Jen Cullerton Johnson MFA, MEd is the author of several books for adults and children including the award winning children's book Seeds of Change (Lee & Low 201). Currently, she teaches at Chicago Public Schools and is a writing professor at Wright College. Mary K. Gove PhD is an Emeritus professor at Cleveland State University and is co-author of a leading best selling textbook, Reading and Learning to Read, which has been in undergraduate and graduate classroom use for twenty years.