Holidays are a time for giving, loving, and appreciating all that life has offered you throughout the year. It is a time when many are feeling more charitable due to the holiday spirit. According to the Digital Giving Index provided by networkforgood.org, people gave an average of $229 on December 31, and $104 the rest of the year. 31% of donations in 2014 were given in the month of December. Obviously this giving is awesome, but we would like to lead the charge in continuing this generous spirit following the holidays.
We are going to be doing a very unique, never-before attempted giveaway that focuses on giving back. The winner will choose his or her favorite education-related charity and we will contribute 5% of our November, December, and January earnings to the charity. While the giveaway is in progress, we will be offering up fun ideas to get your students involved in giving back this 2016. The giveaway starts Monday along with our first giving back tip! Feel free to share with us on Twitter, FB, or on this post ways that you would like to "give back." Don't forget to tag your idea with #givingback2016. Can't wait to read your ideas!!
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Giving Back in the Classroom
Start small: Give your kiddos a homework assignment or class project to do individually or as a group. They can choose a community service to perform over the course of a month and share their experience with the class. Give them the option of doing the presentation orally, through an art project, poster presentation, or however they desire. This will make the experience longer lasting and more relevant for them. Here is a short list of ideas. Many of these are directed at older students, but can be adapted for younger students. They may even come up with awesome ideas on their own!
Get everyone involved: Once you've given your kiddos a small scale community service opportunity, try something as a class. Involve your students in the brainstorming process and see what they would like to do. More ideas here.
Turn it into a project: Either as a class or in groups, have students document their experience. The skills involved in setting up a Project Based Learning experience include: complex reading, writing, critical thinking, strategic thinking and more. Students have to communicate via professional emails. They have to do research on the service they've decided to provide. They have to plan when and where this will take place based on the resources they have at hand. This is an awesome way to get involved in the community and have real world Literacy experiences. Though the article that inspired this is directed at high school students, it's possible for younger students as well. They may just need more guidance.
Please please don't hesitate to share your experiences through Twitter via #givingback2016 or on our blog. We would love to see real life application and how it's working!
Good luck, and happy servicing!
Stock photos courtesy of bigstockphoto.com
This is such a great idea for a giveaway! My class is giving back through a project called Imagine No Malaria. It was actually an older grade's idea and project but when I introduced it to my students, four of them immediately chose to donate their snack money. I was supposed to send home a letter explaining the project to parents but forgot that day and the next day a whole bunch of them came in with spare change to donate. Even though I forgot the letter, they went home and told their families about the project and collected money on their own. I've never been so proud!
ReplyDeleteWhat incredible generosity! Thanks for sharing that. It's always nice to hear stories about students being their sweet selves!
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