# data[].attributes.body
I think a great option would be volunteering at a food kitchen during our nutrition unit. Another one that would be great is students visiting a rest home and learning about  how something health related of their choice was different or has changed then how it is today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Service learning is different than community service in several key ways. Service learning includes student leadership, reflective and academic components, and chances for celebration once the service activity has been successfully completed. Students reflect on community needs, ways to help, and once their service has been completed, they can internalize how their efforts have helped, while learning more about academics such as geography, math, or science.

National School of Character principal Jeannie Maier (Salt Brook Elementary School) describes what one of her students did to raise autism awareness at their school.

Take a look at what our bloggers have to say about service learning, including such topics as what graduates should know before they graduate, connecting service learning to character, and Earth-friendly ideas.

Service Learning Resources at the National Forum on Character Education

Learn all you need to know about service learning at our National Forum on Character Education.

Education in Action: Great Ideas from Great Schools

Get your students involved in service learning. Browse more than 150 Promising Practices and lesson plans for service learning opportunities, arranged by topic, submitted by educators at schools like yours.

Military, America, Heroes

Acts of Kindness and Recognizing Service Learning
Leadership and Kids Helping Kids

Service learning leads to academic integrity, according to David Wangaard, the director of the School for Ethical Education.

DENS - Warren Elementary School
EarlyAct Club - Lalor Elementary School
Junior Police Program - Imagine Schools at Desert West
S.A.I.L. Service Activities Involvement and Leadership - Secaucus School District
Academic Mentoring for At-Risk Students - Lindbergh High School
Elm Acres Service Learning Project - Pittsburg High School
KITTENS (Kindergarteners Inventing Teaching Tools Encouraging Numerous Students) - Endeavour Elementary Magnet School of Technology
Luke's Buddies: Character in Action - Liberty Corner Elementary School
Partnership for Kids - Morgan Selvidge Middle School
Pathways to Inclusion - Cranford High School
The Peter Pan Project - Fox High School
YAP Service Learning Project - Fox High School

General Service Learning

More Service Learning Resources

There are many resources available for community service projects, but the organizations and resources in the link below dedicate themselves to fostering service in a more sustainable approach. They offer service-learning ideas and other resources to help your students engage with their surrounding community and become life-long advocates for giving back.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Service learning is different than community service in several key ways. Service learning includes student leadership, reflective and academic components, and chances for celebration once the service activity has been successfully completed. Students reflect on community needs, ways to help, and once their service has been completed, they can internalize how their efforts have helped, while learning more about academics such as geography, math, or science.

# data[].attributes.body
Snowball activity with matching numbers at the top after any lesson. After they have snowballed a few times they must pair up with there matching number and find commonalities and differences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Let's face it, there are a lot of cooperative learning strategies out there to choose from. The most popular and most-utilized of the cooperative learning strategies is probably the Think-Pair-Share technique. This is where students think about a topic or question, then pair up with a classmate and share their thoughts about it. Educators use these types of cooperative learning strategies in their classrooms because first, they get the students to work together in a team, and second because they are an effective way for students to learn. However, it's always a good idea to try out a new strategy or two to change things up a bit. Here are five cooperative learning strategies you probably haven't tried yet.

If you're looking for a new brainstorming strategy then you're going to love this one. The focused listing strategy is designed for students to generate words to define or describe something. For example, you would give the students a main topic, then ask them to create a list of words or phrases that describe that topic. From there, you can put students into small groups to discuss their lists or you can first put them into groups to generate the lists. Once the lists are completed, you can use the list to help facilitate a small group or whole-group discussion. If you are using the focused listing as a gateway to your lesson, then you can choose one list that all students agree upon and use that.

2. One-Minute Papers

This strategy can be used to gather feedback from you students after a lesson is taught. First, write the following questions on the front board and have students answer them by themselves.

What was the most important thing you learned from the lesson?

What is still unclear about the lesson? What questions do you still have?

What is one thing about the topic that you want to know more about?

Next, put students together into groups to facilitate a discussion. Have students do a Round Robin (take turns talking) and discuss each of their answers to the questions listed on the board. Once students have all answered the questions, then have students figure out which answers they have in common. They can then take this information and come up with the most popular answer to each question, which they then can discuss with the class as a whole.

3. Uncommon Commonalities

If you are looking for a strategy that will help your students become more cohesive, then this is a great one to try. Group students into teams of four and have them come up with a team name. Give each team member a piece of paper and have them fold it the long way in fours and label each section, 1, 2, 3, and 4 at the top. Next, write a question on the front board, such as "How many siblings do you have?" The teams' goal is to discuss the question with their group and figure out what they all have in common. If all four team members have one brother, then they will write that in column four, if all three of them have one brother then they will write that in column three and so on. The activity continues with each new question that is put on the board.

4. Forced Debate

This strategy requires students to use their communication skills to work within a group. Here's how it works: The teacher writes a proposition on the front board, such as "Should there be a vending machine in the school cafeteria?" then the students who agree move to one side of the classroom and the students who disagree move to other side. Once students are on one side of the classroom, that is now their group. The teacher then forces them to debate the opposing side that they have chosen. This strategy really utilizes students' critical thinking skills and forces them to really think about the question as a whole in order to argue for the opposing side rather than what they really feel about the question.

5. Cooperative Graffiti

Another great brainstorming technique to try is cooperative graffiti. This strategy requires students to think about a topic and write down as many ideas as possible using different-colored pens. To start, divide students into small groups and give each group a large, butcher block piece of paper and a variety of colorful pens. Write down a broad topic on the front board, and on your command "Go!", instruct students to write down as many ideas as they can that correlate with the topic you wrote on the board. Once the time is up (about 5-10 minutes), then have students try and organize their colorful ideas into categories.
Have you tried any of these cooperative learning strategies yet? If so, how do you like them? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below, we would love to hear them.
Janelle Cox is an education writer who uses her experience and knowledge to provide creative and original writing in the field of education. Janelle holds Masters of Science in Education from the State University of New York College at Buffalo. She is a contributing writer to TeachHUB.com, TeachHUB Magazine, and Hey Teach. She was also the Elementary Education Expert for About.com for five years. You can follow her on Twitter @Empoweringk6ed, on Facebook at Empowering K6 Educators, or contact her at Janellecox78@yahoo.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Cooperative Learning Strategies To Try Today

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Let's face it, there are a lot of cooperative learning strategies out there to choose from. The most popular and most-utilized of the cooperative learning strategies is probably the Think-Pair-Share technique. This is where students think about a topic or question, then pair up with a classmate and share their thoughts about it.

# data[].attributes.body
End of unit projects like you are a nutritional and you must do a specific task.

# data[].attributes.body
How cigarettes and tobacco effect the body. They can use the internet and reliable resources to find the information them selves after we have asked questions and peaked interest.

# data[].attributes.body
Marijuana legalization. The pros and cons. Why its such a fight and hot topic.

# data[].attributes.body
Students can make a family tree with hereditary diseases (kind of like a gene o gram) and what they should do to maintain or prevent the disease. They can make it on a poster or on a video with voice overs from the family member themselves.

# data[].attributes.body
People construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. HEALTH: that not all fats are bad. They have previous ideas about it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning. Start with the Explanation section to gain a good understanding of the CONCEPT of constructivism. Then go on to Demonstration, where we move from CONCEPT TO CLASSROOM!

What is constructivism?
How does this theory differ from traditional ideas about teaching and learning?
What does constructivism have to do with my classroom?
Expert interview
What is the history of constructivism, and how has it changed over time?
What are some critical perspectives?
What are the benefits of constructivism?

What is constructivism?
Constructivism is basically a theory -- based on observation and scientific study -- about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know.

In the classroom, the constructivist view of learning can point towards a number of different teaching practices. In the most general sense, it usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing. The teacher makes sure she understands the students' preexisting conceptions, and guides the activity to address them and then build on them.

Constructivist teachers encourage students to constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain understanding. By questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist classroom ideally become "expert learners." This gives them ever-broadening tools to keep learning. With a well-planned classroom environment, the students learn HOW TO LEARN.

You might look at it as a spiral. When they continuously reflect on their experiences, students find their ideas gaining in complexity and power, and they develop increasingly strong abilities to integrate new information. One of the teacher's main roles becomes to encourage this learning and reflection process.

For example: Groups of students in a science class are discussing a problem in physics. Though the teacher knows the "answer" to the problem, she focuses on helping students restate their questions in useful ways. She prompts each student to reflect on and examine his or her current knowledge. When one of the students comes up with the relevant concept, the teacher seizes upon it, and indicates to the group that this might be a fruitful avenue for them to explore. They design and perform relevant experiments. Afterward, the students and teacher talk about what they have learned, and how their observations and experiments helped (or did not help) them to better understand the concept.

Contrary to criticisms by some (conservative/traditional) educators, constructivism does not dismiss the active role of the teacher or the value of expert knowledge. Constructivism modifies that role, so that teachers help students to construct knowledge rather than to reproduce a series of facts. The constructivist teacher provides tools such as problem-solving and inquiry-based learning activities with which students formulate and test their ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and pool and convey their knowledge in a collaborative learning environment. Constructivism transforms the student from a passive recipient of information to an active participant in the learning process. Always guided by the teacher, students construct their knowledge actively rather than just mechanically ingesting knowledge from the teacher or the textbook.

Constructivism is also often misconstrued as a learning theory that compels students to "reinvent the wheel." In fact, constructivism taps into and triggers the student's innate curiosity about the world and how things work. Students do not reinvent the wheel but, rather, attempt to understand how it turns, how it functions. They become engaged by applying their existing knowledge and real-world experience, learning to hypothesize, testing their theories, and ultimately drawing conclusions from their findings.

The best way for you to really understand what constructivism is and what it means in your classroom is by seeing examples of it at work, speaking with others about it, and trying it yourself. As you progress through each segment of this workshop, keep in mind questions or ideas to share with your colleagues.

| | | |

| | | |

Thirteen | Thirteen Ed Online | thirteencelebration.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning. Start with the Explanation section to gain a good understanding of the CONCEPT of constructivism. Then go on to Demonstration, where we move from CONCEPT TO CLASSROOM! What is constructivism? How does this theory differ from traditional ideas about teaching and learning?