Lighter Load
Students in Heidi Garber’s 2nd grade class at Orchard View Elementary in Middlebury participated in a “Be the Change” service-learning project and received an INSPIRE3 mini-grant to help fund the project. One of the LTG lessons used Many Hands Together Make a Lighter Load (2nd grade) Giving students an understanding of philanthropy and how, although they are small, can work together to a make a difference. The class read books and watched videos to help them understand the difference between needs and wants and then searched through magazines and cut out pictures representing needs and wants and made a chart. As a school-wide project they collected food and other items to donate to the local food pantry. Then as a class service project, the class made 13 knotted fleece blankets for a local homeless shelter. Allowing students to Be the Change will give meaning to curriculum content and engage them in real-world problem solving.
