COMMUNITY SERVICE PROJECTS
The capstone of the Nature Awareness and Service program is a community service project. Students will have the opportunity to share their inspirations from classroom and field experiences with fellow community members as they identify and respond to a community need.
A key component of service-learning is students' participation in the designing of the project. This ownership generates a successful learning environment and is part of what makes service-learning unique and effective. A Volunteer Naturalist from Riverkeepers will revisit the classroom and help students translate their classroom and field experiences into a practical service project. Teachers should communicate their time constraints and needs to the Riverkeepers to ensure that an appropriate project comes together.
What Kinds Of Projects Can Students Do?
- Share what they have learned about human impacts on water quality: talk to another class about their experience, make posters to hang in the halls, submit a poem, article, drawing to the school newspaper, etc.
- Write a letter to a local, elected official.
- Restore a natural habitat by planting native species in the neighborhood or on school property.
- Arrange a community clean-up day for a local park or on school grounds.
- Organize a fundraiser and donate proceeds to the school or to an organization of their choice.
- Initiate a habitat enhancement project: remove weeds, build nesting boxes for native bird species, clean-up a section of the nearest river or creek, etc.
PAST SERVICE PROJECTS
In Fall 2007, a class of 4th grade students conducted their service learning project at Bauman Park. After learning about invasive species, the class decided to pull ivy to aid in the restoration of Fanno Creek. There was an amazing amount of energy filling the woods that afternoon as the students heaped their treasures into a pile.
The year before in Fall 2006, another class of 4th grade students decided to build chickadee nesting boxes to increase habitat for these native birds. They sold the nesting boxes and included directions on how/where to place the chickadee boxes. With the money from the sales, they purchased native plants and then planted them at Gotter Prairie, the site of their field trip.
