We believe that Project Based Service Learning is the most effective pedagogical
strategy for ALL students to achieve rigorous academic and civic
success across all grade levels and regardless of demographic variables.
There are 7 Hallmarks of the Project Based Service Learning methodology:
OWNERSHIP - When students are interested and invested in the
completion of a project, they begin to own their educational
processes. When students own the project, all aspects, including
mastery of curriculum become important to the students.
- With ownership comes personal responsibility.
- Completion of the project becomes important.
- Employment of strategies like critical thinking, hypothesis, extension of learning becomes commonplace.
- Motivation to succeed.
- Ownership starts with YOU, the teacher!
Get invested in the processes of PBSL. Initiate projects with your
students that interest you, so you can authentically Model ownership.
Teach!
ENGAGEMENT - Ownership and engagement are essentially 2 sides
of the same coin. When students take ownership and personal
responsibility for the successful outcome of their project, it follows
that they are engaged and interested. Any good Service Learning
project will present students with many opportunities to think
critically, make hypotheses, and extend what they have learned.
Engagement in the project is the door to performing these important
skills which engender academic and civic success.
COOPERATIVE TEACHING/LEARNING - Teacher collaborations
present powerful opportunities for educators to learn from each other
which can increase the strategies available in their pedagogical
toolboxes.
Students working cooperatively in small groups to
achieve project based goals is a powerful methodology to achieve
curricular and standards based objectives. Moreover, when students are
focused on the goals of a project, they are more inclined to negotiate
with their peers and make persuasive arguments to get their point of
view adopted by the group. The cooperative nature of small groups
working together for successful completion of the project has an
extremely positive effect on the classroom climate and behavior issues
are significantly mitigated.
CITIZENSHIP/Community Partnerships - Development of good
citizenship skills as part of the fabric of teaching and learning is
critical to the long term, real-life success of our students.
Civic skills give greater depth, context and meaning to student mastery of curriculum and standards.
Integral
to a Service Learning project is the inclusion of Community
Partnerships. By their nature, professionals who freely give their
time and expertise to benefit students are models of good citizenship.
In general, Community Partners model good citizenship in action.
MASTERY OF CURRICULUM - The primary rationale to employ the
Service Learning is, in fact, as a tool for student achievement, both
academically and socially. A project's success is ultimately
determined by whether the project based activities are connected to
grade appropriate curriculum and state standards and more importantly,
whether these connections enable students to achieve mastery across a
range of academic disciplines. We have seen that when students work
within the Project Based methodology they own their educational
processes, are engaged in a project's activities, work cooperatively to
achieve success, and see citizenship modeled by the Community Partners,
then mastery of curriculum becomes more likely because the students are
more self motivated achieve success in all aspects of their scholastic
experience.
TECHNOLOGY - Technology is the #2 pencil of
the 21st century. As such, any good Service Learning project will be
embedded with a wide array of technical applications.
FUN - School
and Fun? While the terms are usually in diametric opposition to each
other, students having FUN is an integral aspect of the Project Based
Service Learning methodology and is the overarching link that makes
PBSL so effective.
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