Small Shifts. Big Growth.A groundbreaking resource for K–5 educators, The Green Literacy Handbook shows you how to teach critical thinking, reading, writing, and environmental awareness all at once.
Using literacy skills and engaging in picture books and digital media, helps you spark inquiry, lead powerful conversations, and connect classroom learning toward sustainable, real-world action. The Green Literacy Handbook gives you the tools to raise critical thinkers, compassionate leaders, and young environmental changemakers. |
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The Power of Green Literacy Handbook
- Encourages deep thinking and meaningful dialogue about our relationship with the natural world through the use of picture books and digital media
- Integrates environmental awareness into everyday instruction across subjects and throughout the school year
- Bridges the gap between environmental education and real-world student impact
- Provides a clear framework for educators to lead critical conversations around sustainability, justice, and community
- Empowers students to make meaning, find their voice, and move toward informed, compassionate action
Discover What's Inside The Green Literacy Handbook
Whether you're just beginning or deepening your practice, The Green Literacy Handbook offers flexible strategies, rich stories, and tools you can use right away.
The Green Literacy Handbook is a practical, inspiring guide for educators who want to connect literacy, environmental awareness, and student voice. Divided into three main parts—plus a powerful epilogue—it moves from foundational ideas to real classroom practice to student-led action.
Part 1: Foundations of Green Literacy
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Part 1: Foundations of Green LiteracyThis section grounds you in the philosophy and purpose of Green Literacy.
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Part 2 Teaching Green Literacy |
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Part 2: Teaching Green Literacy See Green Literacy in action through the voices of real teachers.
- Chapter 3 shares how educators developed and implemented Green Literacy through long- and short-term professional development. You'll see how thematic questions like “How do you become an environmental leader?” were created and applied across grade levels.
- Chapter 4 focuses on designing and adapting thematic units, offering 12 key insights and real examples from classrooms—including specific strategies used with younger learners (K–2).
Part 3 Develop Thematic Units
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Part 3: Thematic Units in ActionHere, theory becomes practice. Chapters 5–7 feature three fully developed thematic units that explore environmental issues at personal, communal, and global levels:
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Repeating Features In Each Chapter
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To make the Handbook as user-friendly as possible, every chapter from 1–7 includes built-in supports that help you reflect, plan, and implement with ease:
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Ready to Teach. Ready to Inspire.
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🌱 Design thematic units that integrate reading, writing, environmental education, and climate justice
🌱 Strengthen confidence in leading hands-on, culturally responsive, and standards-aligned lessons 🌱 Foster student voice, collaboration, and environmental stewardship through inquiry-based learning 🌱 Bridge ELA, science, and social studies to create interdisciplinary, K–8-ready instruction 🌱 Bring nature-based learning into classrooms, outdoor spaces, and intergenerational settings 🌱 Reflect, adapt, and grow through a model of continuous improvement |
Discover the Possibilities
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👩🏫 What Teachers Can Expect:
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🏫 What Administrators Can Expect:
- A clear framework that supports district literacy and sustainability goals
- Resources to strengthen professional development and cross-curricular planning
- Practical tools for fostering student engagement and teacher collaboration
- Opportunities to connect school communities to local environmental issues
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🌱 What Students Can Expect:
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What People Are Saying:
Editorial Reviews
"The Green Literacy Handbook is that rare commodity – a book that is both inspiring and useful –
for the audience it addresses directly (teachers, curriculum developers, program directors,
environmentalists) as well as those who will be impacted (families, communities, organizations,
cities – essentially all citizens of the imperiled world).The Handbook is simple in the best sense of the word – beautiful, coherent, sensible, and clear– yet it is not an “easy read.” Johnson and Gove demand a good deal of the reader interspersing into the text opportunities for thought and reflection, for imagination and connection, for exemplification. What they are doing, of course, is illustrating what they urge
the reader to do with those who will be before them as students."
Susanne M Dumbleton, PhD / Professor Emeritus DePaul University
“The Green Literacy model empowers students to be active participants in their learning through critical thinking, dialogue, and creation. The Green Literacy Handbook provides practical support for teachers to position students to connect literacy skills with nature and the environment in ways that are engaging, relevant, and accessible.”
--Lorraine Radice / Award-winning author and school district leader
“This handbook is an essential companion for educators in a variety of places and spaces that provides a flexible and helpful framework that honors educators’ unique journeys and sparks critical conversations for our students. It is a resource that empowers us to help cultivate a new generation of thoughtful storytellers and stewards for our planet.”
--Micah Miner / Director of innovation and technology, author, ISTE community leader, education expert
“The Green Literacy Handbook deserves to be in the hands of teachers everywhere, including teachers in urban schools and those who do not think of themselves as especially ‘green.’ Overflowing with pedagogical insights, transformative activities, excellent reading recommendations, horizon-expanding questions, and much more, the handbook maps out student-centered approaches that promise not only to turn K–5 classrooms into laboratories of environmental-justice thinking but to prepare young learners for lives of meaningful environmental action. This is a book that our educational system has needed, badly, for many years.”
--Bart H. Welling / Associate professor of English, University of North Florida
"As clergy, we teach that we are partners with the Source of life to tend and guard the earth. Instilling environmental literacy in children nurtures both responsibility and reverence—tools they’ll need to care for the Earth and each other.”
---Rabbi Ari Moffic/ Chicago, IL
“This book encourages young people to think critically and confidently about their relationship to the world around them. As a parent, I value this approach to preparing students to work through the environmental challenges they will inherit.”
--Bridget Joyce / Parent
“The Green Literacy Handbook by Jen Cullerton Johnson and Mary K. Gove expertly combines
the core practices and principles of authentic and disciplinary literacy. Not only does it provide
effective strategies for how students can strengthen their literacy skills. It also offers engaging
strategies that will encourage students to comprehend and communicate like a scientist. This
book serves as a helpful resource for elementary teachers who use the subject of science as the
vehicle for students to learn how to read and respond to complex informational text.”
—Erik M. Francis, Author, Deconstructing Depth of Knowledge and Inquiring Minds Want to
Learn
for the audience it addresses directly (teachers, curriculum developers, program directors,
environmentalists) as well as those who will be impacted (families, communities, organizations,
cities – essentially all citizens of the imperiled world).The Handbook is simple in the best sense of the word – beautiful, coherent, sensible, and clear– yet it is not an “easy read.” Johnson and Gove demand a good deal of the reader interspersing into the text opportunities for thought and reflection, for imagination and connection, for exemplification. What they are doing, of course, is illustrating what they urge
the reader to do with those who will be before them as students."
Susanne M Dumbleton, PhD / Professor Emeritus DePaul University
“The Green Literacy model empowers students to be active participants in their learning through critical thinking, dialogue, and creation. The Green Literacy Handbook provides practical support for teachers to position students to connect literacy skills with nature and the environment in ways that are engaging, relevant, and accessible.”
--Lorraine Radice / Award-winning author and school district leader
“This handbook is an essential companion for educators in a variety of places and spaces that provides a flexible and helpful framework that honors educators’ unique journeys and sparks critical conversations for our students. It is a resource that empowers us to help cultivate a new generation of thoughtful storytellers and stewards for our planet.”
--Micah Miner / Director of innovation and technology, author, ISTE community leader, education expert
“The Green Literacy Handbook deserves to be in the hands of teachers everywhere, including teachers in urban schools and those who do not think of themselves as especially ‘green.’ Overflowing with pedagogical insights, transformative activities, excellent reading recommendations, horizon-expanding questions, and much more, the handbook maps out student-centered approaches that promise not only to turn K–5 classrooms into laboratories of environmental-justice thinking but to prepare young learners for lives of meaningful environmental action. This is a book that our educational system has needed, badly, for many years.”
--Bart H. Welling / Associate professor of English, University of North Florida
"As clergy, we teach that we are partners with the Source of life to tend and guard the earth. Instilling environmental literacy in children nurtures both responsibility and reverence—tools they’ll need to care for the Earth and each other.”
---Rabbi Ari Moffic/ Chicago, IL
“This book encourages young people to think critically and confidently about their relationship to the world around them. As a parent, I value this approach to preparing students to work through the environmental challenges they will inherit.”
--Bridget Joyce / Parent
“The Green Literacy Handbook by Jen Cullerton Johnson and Mary K. Gove expertly combines
the core practices and principles of authentic and disciplinary literacy. Not only does it provide
effective strategies for how students can strengthen their literacy skills. It also offers engaging
strategies that will encourage students to comprehend and communicate like a scientist. This
book serves as a helpful resource for elementary teachers who use the subject of science as the
vehicle for students to learn how to read and respond to complex informational text.”
—Erik M. Francis, Author, Deconstructing Depth of Knowledge and Inquiring Minds Want to
Learn
