Chapter 9: Green Literacy K–5: Nurturing a Scientific Mindset

In the Age of Inference, Green Literacy offers ideas for nurturing the proper mindset for teaching critical thinking around scientific findings related to human impacts on the environment. Green Literacy is a constructivist practice of teaching that develops in-depth thinking, dialoguing, and responding to our relationship to the environment using literature and digital media as catalysts. Young people in K–5 become engaged in inference, drawing from evidence in these texts and digital media. Thus, in Green Literacy K–5 classrooms teachers begin the process of creating a scientific literate society capable of addressing pressing issues with a better grasp on how to view and infer from evidence. As you read this chapter, consider specific ways Green Literacy’s three cycles of comprehension resonate within the Age of Inference in a school’s K–5 teaching practice. Also, think about how three cycles of comprehension facilitate engagement in inferential thinking as young people move from K to Grade 5. In addition, readers can reflect on how taking a critical stance in K–5 influences young people as they enter into middle and high school