Faculty • Students • Community • Publications
Culminating Projects • PeaceJam Northwest

1. What Is Service Learning?
2. Ways to Enrich Classroom Teaching
3. Linking Service Activities to the Essential Learnings
4. Building Effective Curriculum
5. Resources for Faculty

Ideas for Enriching Social Studies, History and Civics Classes:

Social Studies EALRS

Exploring the responsibilities of individuals, local and federal governments for the community issue.

• Studies Civics 2. Core Values of American Democracy:
  The student understands and applies the ideals, beliefs and core values of American Democracy. Generates ideas relating to the responsibilities of citizens in society. Engaging in planning and implementing advocacy or direct service activities.
  
• Social Studies Civics 4. Citizen Involvement:
  The student appreciates the responsibilities of democratic citizenship and engages in essential forms of democratic citizen involvement.

Students identify an issue in the school they would like to change and they take all the steps needed to implement their plan of action.

Historical Perspectives and Interpretations: Possible Projects

Benchmark 1: Gather information from local community members, the museum, and community to reconstruct past events.

• Perform historical plays for younger children.
  
  
• Write a history of the school.
  
  
• Develop a game (i.e. Oregon Trail) that captures the central events, issues, and decisions of different time periods.
  
  
• Complete an historical tile mural for a public transit station or public building.
  
  
• Write books that capture "A Day in the Life" of a child their age at different time periods. Share these books with younger children or make them available through the local historic museum.
  
  
• Design a quilt where each square captures a significant event in the community's history. Display this quilt at various places in the community.
  
  
• Capture the migration of different cultures in and out of the community. Document the contributions of different cultural communities have made in murals, books.
  
  

• Compose biographies of people who have had a dramatic impact in the community.
  
  
• Research young people who have made a political difference locally and nationally.
  
  
• Develop a local Giraffe Project or Heroes Walk.
  
  
• Work with state political history projects.
  
  

• Explain the probable cuases and effects.
  
  
• Hold local policy nights with community members to understand the world problems, drawing from perspecitves and options regarding policies.
  
  
• Multiple sources and perspectives. Research a school or community issue, examining the policies that influence it and capture various views in a resource guide.
  
  

1. What Is Service Learning?
2. Ways to Enrich Classroom Teaching
3. Linking Service Activities to the Essential Learnings
4. Building Effective Curriculum
5. Resources for Faculty