Humane Heroes Curriculum

Free Literacy-Based, SEL Lessons

For more than 20 years, educators have used Chicken Soup for the Soul books in classrooms to encourage reading, offer advice and support and provide a resource for students of all ages. Now, we’ve joined forces with American Humane, the country’s first national humane organization, and a team of curriculum development experts, to bring you FREE lessons based on the Chicken Soup for the Soul Humane Heroes book series.

The lessons and materials of this curriculum use narrative and storytelling to provide students with opportunities to strengthen literacy skills, discover and apply the values of humane conservation, practice kindness and compassion toward animals, and become a new generation of advocates for animal care and protection.

This program targets 4th, 7th and 10th graders. True to the Chicken Soup for the Soul tradition it features inspiring, real-life stories at its center. The stories of animal rescue and rehabilitation found in the books Chicken Soup for the Soul: Humane Heroes Vols. I - III, will help your students:

  • Increase their awareness of local and national animal conservation, rescue, and rehabilitation efforts at zoos and aquariums
  • Improve students’ literacy in reading narrative text, speaking and listening, writing in response to reading, and writing explanatory and persuasive texts
  • Discover the ways in which Humane Heroes, or animal caregivers, have an important, global impact on our environment

We’re very proud to offer these books, and this program, to you for free. It’s one more way we’re trying to change the world one story — and one lesson — at a time.

Lessons from Volume I

  • Elementary School Implementation Guide
  • A “Tail” of Two Friends
  • Lost on a Stormy Beach
  • Rescuing Nickel
  • Saving Our Undersea Forests
  • Understanding Gorilla Talk
  • Wings of Kindness

Download all Volume I Elementary School lessons (12.9 MB zip)

Lessons from Volume II

  • Middle School Implementation Guide
  • Beloved Brother Bears
  • Elephants Help Solve a Medical Mystery
  • High-Tech Heroes
  • Saving a Baby Elephant
  • Stranded 9-1-1
  • The Little Tiger with Heart

Download all Volume II Middle School lessons (10.2 MB zip)

Lessons from Volume III

  • High School Implementation Guide
  • An Ocean of Concern
  • El Milagro
  • Foot for a King
  • Humane Emergency
  • Return to the Sea
  • The Elephant Diaries

Download all Volume III High School lessons (12.1 MB zip)