With Pop Culture Classroom’s free, downloadable graphic novel teaching guide for Young Katherine Johnson by William Augel (Humanoids), you can share the power of history, math, and imagination with your favorite 3rd and 4th grade readers!

Young Katherine Johnson is a fantastical reimagining of the childhood of Johnson, legendary for her math skills that made NASA’s first moon landing possible, and the subject of the film Hidden Figures.

With the Young Katherine Johnson teaching guide, students can learn about NASA pioneer Katherine Johnson’s story and themes and topics like:

• Math All Around Us. Everywhere Katherine looks she sees numbers and equations.
• Black Identity. Before Katherine was one of the few Black scientists working at NASA in the mid 20th century, she began exploring her identity as a child in White Sulfur Springs.
• Giftedness / Being Different. Katherine’s natural gifts for math set her apart from her family and peers, and they often cause her to see the world differently than others.
• Different Perspectives. Many of the vignettes in Young Katherine Johnson illustrate the characters’ different perspectives on various subjects.
• Astronomy. Before Katherine worked for NASA, she dreamt of the Moon!

The free downloadable teaching guide — which is aligned to 3rd and 4th grade Math and Reading: Literature Common Core standards —  is a great classroom resource for teachers, librarians, and other educators, with ready-to-use:

• Pre-reading activities,
• Discussion questions,
• Project ideas, and
• Media pairings.