Service Learning: A Guide to Planning, Implementing, and Assessing Student Projects

"There is no better way to improve student attitudes and outcomes than to blend both meaningful community and global service with improved academic achievement. Sally Berman invites her readers to do just that."
-Bob Koehs, Service Learning Coordinator
Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency

"This book is full of practical tips for the classroom teacher, including strategies for assessing student learning."
-Jeanine Yard, Learn and Serve Program Officer
Michigan Community Service Commission

Provide authentic, lasting learning opportunities for students in their own community

Service learning offers students the unique opportunity to learn both in the classroom and in the real world. This exciting teaching strategy, detailed in Berman′s second edition of Service Learning, motivates students to learn content information, processes, and skills while making authentic connections to their surrounding community.

This valuable resource explains the benefits of service learning and provides a step-by-step guide for using the instructional model. It features nine service-learning projects that are broken down into basic, intermediate, and advanced levels.

Each project features:

• Strategies for aligning service and curricular goals
• Tips for involving students in decision-making
• Guidelines for managing different phases of the project
• Activities that foster reflection and self-evaluation
• Tips for differentiating by tapping into multiple intelligences

In this single resource, teachers will find everything they need to successfully implement service learning projects, helping students gain deeper understandings of content while positively impacting their communities.

Sally Berman specializes in teaching educators how to use practical strategies that expand student teamwork, cognition, metacognition, and self-evaluation skills. She developed and tested many of her ideas during her 30 years of teaching science in a large Chicago-area high school. Berman regularly presents at workshops and conferences and has taught graduate courses for SkyLight Professional Development in conjunction with St. Xavier University and Cumberland University.