Model Practitioners

The Delta Sierra Model Practitioners invite you to visit their classroom/afterschool program to see service learning in action. Contact them directly to schedule a time  to visit.

Donna Boyd, Kindergarten, Hirsch Elementary, Tracy Unified School District

In my kindergarten classroom, we use Service Learning on an almost daily basis. We always have something going on, even if it is very simple. Our kids grasp the philosophy of making a difference and being civically responsible because at the beginning of the school year we began by talking about others. Kindergartners are very "me" orientated, so we work from the beginning to help the children take the focus from themselves onto others. Whatever our project may be, we discuss at length, and daily, about the reasons behind what we're doing and ask them the "How would you feel if you....." or "What would you do if you....." or "What can we do...." or "How can we help....". Most generally, if we're collecting things (blankets and coats from our annual drive, canned soup for the Souper Bowl of Caring, gifts and food for our Brighter Christmas family, etc) we begin by counting and graphing. Both of those are state standards and on our TUSD report card. When we are doing the blankets and coats, we also talk about weather, when we're doing the Souper Bowl, we have a great nutrition unit and we always do a big thing with the literature book, STONE SOUP, where we read a variety of editions of STONE SOUP, compare and contrast the books, brainstorm our own soup recipe, then everyone brings in an ingredient and we make our own soup in class. We also as a class (I'm talking my partner and I and our combined classes every time I say as a class because we team teach) sort the canned food into types of food and box them up for Interfaith. We involve other classes from the school, and in the past when we collected a large number, the entire school has sorted. Both the Blanket and Coat Drive and the Souper Bowl are school wide activities. Also school-wide throughout the year we do other things as they come up. Sometimes kids in the upper grades or another teacher will see a local need in the newspaper and we'll pick it up. At least once a year we do some kind of coin drive. Even though those are mainly a community service project for most classes, we use them to learn about money, weights and measures, etc. Volume is also a state standard. Other classes do things with the money also. This year we collected books for Ethiopia Reads and we kept a count of the number of books collected by using miniature marshmallows in a big jar. We discussed empty/full, again weights, and at the end as a class (combined class) we counted the marshmallows and grouped them by twos and then fives. At the end of this year we did our annual "Ordinary Mary" activity, where we read and discussed the book ORDINARY MARY'S EXTRAORDINARY DEED, then each of the kids colored five flowers and gave them to people, because in the story a chain of giving began when Mary gave her neighbor a bowl of blueberries and she in turn made five plates of muffins, etc. Another thing we did this year was I got involved in a card project. A high school freshman, who's special needs sister I had had as a full-inclusion student for two years many years ago, came to me and asked for help with a card project. He wanted to give cards along with a small treat, to the residents of the convalescent hospitals and even Tracy Hospital patients. So we helped him with the cards for all of the major holidays. I invited the school to participate as well so we were able to contribute a wide variety of cards. Our kids were really involved in it, and we talked alot about the kinds of people who would be receiving our cards, how they would feel receiving them. We told them to think of each of their cards as a gift to a special person, and they were so cute as they were so careful to color their cards perfectly. It was neat!

Contact Donna at dboyd@tusd.net