Science and Service Learning

Exemplar Type: UNIT
Title: Science and Service Learning
Grades: 3-5
Discipline: Science
Submitted By: Eileen Merritt


Science and Service Learning

We believe that high quality service-learning instruction engages and motivates students and teaches important science concepts and collaborative skills. Students who participate in service-learning gain the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to become an engaged citizen and solve environmental challenges that lie ahead. We strive to support teachers' science instruction, boost students’ collaborative skills, and spark students’ interest in future civic work.

Participants will explore the topics of energy and natural resources in depth, and try new ways of engaging their students in science that align with the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards. Participants will model and teach students the collaborative skills needed to work together to impact authentic problems in their community. Participants will facilitate a high quality service-learning project with their students.


BENCHMARKS REPRESENTED IN THIS EXEMPLAR

Big Ideas

  • Humans are dependent on Earth’s life-support systems

  • We are all in this together: We are interdependent on each other and on the natural systems

  • The changes to the Earth’s surface environments made by human activity are causing unintended consequences on the health and well-being of human and other life on Earth (proposed Anthropocene Epoch)

  • Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

Higher Order Thinking Skills

  • Anticipatory: Futures Thinking

  • Complex: Critical Thinking

  • Mindful: Reflective Thinking

Applied Knowledge and Actions

  • Inventing The Future

  • Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

  • Multiple Perspectives

Dispositions

  • Caring

  • Respectful

  • Responsible

Applications and Actions

  • Create Social Learning Communities

  • Honor the specific knowledge and skills that each person and culture brings

  • Ask different questions and actively listen for the answer

  • Empower people and groups

  • Envision, strategize and plan

  • Treat others with respect and dignity

  • Listen to one another

Community Connections

  • Consider and prepare for a range of potential future scenarios, while charting a course toward the preferred future

  • Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum

  • School buildings and grounds serve the whole community as learning hubs for continuing education of individuals as well as school and community stakeholders to learn together for the future they want