As you may remember, our grade 5 & 6
students have started a service learning program this year and boy, oh boy have
we made some progress. Once we completed a needs assessment of our community,
chose our charities and set our semester goals, we hit the ground running with
recess fundraisers and a school-wide book drive (more on that later). I was a little worried if they’d
be able to pull it off, but they threw any doubts I had right out the window. They
ROCKED IT! (I'm so proud)
The great thing about service learning is that
it has all kinds of great curriculum tie-ins. The kids sent out surveys in
google drive to learn what kind of fundraiser to do, created flyers to advertise,
wrote and delivered announcements to every class, and that all happened before the actual fundraisers!
In preparation for the actual events, we learned
some basic principles of economics and weighed the costs and profits that we
could expect from each fundraising idea that was proposed. Finally, the date
had been set and each group had decided on their snack. One group was insistent
on making smoothies and could not be dissuaded by logic. I tried to warn them
at the amount of work that would be involved, but they were too excited and I
figured that letting them make the decisions (good or bad) would ultimately
benefit them. So- smoothies it wasJ.
The other group chose popcorn which was much more manageable and logistically
sound.
Our first fundraiser was scheduled during a
Friday recess and each group was given only 45 minutes to prepare their booth
and product. Once recess let out, it was non-stop action. I loved how well they
all worked together to make it happen. They assigned each person on their team
a job; line control, cashier, packaging, order taker. I mean to tell you, it
was amazing.
By the end of recess, we were sweaty and
exhausted, but EVERYONE had a smile on their face. We counted the money we made
and came out ahead by more than $150! Not too bad for our first-ever
fundraiser, huh? Here are a few shots from the big day:
Announcing the fundraiser
Slingin' popcorn
Check out this line!!!
That's what teamwork looks like:)
If teaching doesn't pan out, I can always work at Jamba Juice... hehehe
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