Service Learning Workshop- Cathryn Berger Kaye

Over the past two days I had the pleasure of learning about service learning with Cathryn Berger Kaye. As an expert in the field, she sped us through a wide range of ideas for how to get students planning, implementing and reflecting on service learning within what we already do at school, While I recommend this entire workshop to anyone interested in service learning, I will share a few highlights that I find applicable to all areas of my inquiry teaching practice.

MISO Question Sort for Research

How many students think that research=Google? No matter how many times I model, explain, have students explain and listen to students share their understanding of why Google is not actually the end-all for research, their minds seem stuck in Google. (Well done I guess, Google!) While I do use Google all the time myself and appreciate its worth as a search engine, there is no real research starts and ends with Google. This is why the MISO method is so effective. By having students first identify a range of questions that they are interested in learning about under a topic or issue, they can then sort their questions into quadrants to find out more. Here's how it works.

M: If the question might best be answered searching through media, including books, newspapers, Social Media, magazines, movies, etc., then the question goes in the M quadrant.
I: ​If the question might best be answered by interviewing an expert, then the question goes in the I quadrant. (The needs assessment idea below is helpful in finding parent experts and Twitter is extremely helpful for finding experts outside the community!)
S: If the question might best be answered by surveying people, then the question goes in the S quadrant. Students will quickly learn what kinds of survey questions are helpful and which ones are not.
O: If the question might best be answered by observing, experimenting or experiencing, then the question goes in the O quadrant. This part is often more exciting than the old Google search so pointing it out explicitly like this seems like a great idea.

Since my students are used to coming up with questions related to our PYP Units of Inquiry that matter to them, using the MISO sort idea would be an added and highly beneficial step for my class. The potential for action is clear too, as outlined in my notes from the workshop here below. By diversifying the field of incoming information and pointing it toward identifying a need, action becomes an obvious part of the process. I plan to continue questioning students during their personal inquiry investigations to point them toward identifying why their findings matter (the big "so what?") but maybe guiding them to identify a need too would help spark the action element in more inquiries. In fact, perhaps just listening to their thinking with a lens of helping them clarify a need when they come up with one would be enough to see even more action happening as a result of the curriculum.

Using Quotes in the Classroom

Cathryn Berger Kaye discussed the relevance and importance of quotes in learning. She handed out a variety of quotes and led us through a sharing experience where everyone paired up, read their quotes to each other and then had the option to keep the original or swap for the other. If either person wanted to swap, then both had to. Even if someone did not want to swap, they were required to if the other wished to do so. She explained the importance of using this type of exercise to develop a habit of generosity (giving even when we don't necessarily want to).

Cathryn also mentioned that a teacher she knows puts a quote up before each class for students to read as they enter. Since I know that my students enjoy the Growth Mindset quotes I reference regularly in problem solving and the precepts from the book Wonder that I am currently reading aloud to them, I think they would really enjoy connecting with wisdom from other quotes as well. I will experiment with the idea of posting a quote each morning as the students enter the room. I wonder if they will start to look forward to coming in and reading the board each morning for a new quote (maybe that will even encourage them to read the morning instructions on a regular basis too!).

Collective Definitions

While the idea of this exercise was to help us define service learning, I can see its relevance to other areas of vocabulary development as well. After viewing multiple examples of service learning, we made a large Y on a piece or paper and wrote to words service and learning in the bottom two sections. As a table group we then came up with as many words as possible within a few minutes to define service in the left section of the Y and learning in the right section. Then we were given another few minutes to use what we came up with to develop a collective definition of service learning with ten words or less. We wrote that definition and drew a picture to go along with it in the top section of the Y. Lastly, all four groups got together and shared our definitions. Through this exercise, we developed a collective understanding of the term service learning.

I believe that this has potential within out PYP Units of Inquiry as well. It would be interesting to show examples and then have students define unit-related vocabulary such as this: 

Personal Inventories

Assessing the skills, talents and interests of the community you live, work and contribute to just makes sense. I love the idea about having students complete their own personal inventory by interviewing one another and then taking it home to interview their parents. What a clever way to notice, celebrate and collect data about our students and parent community!

Downloads and More Information

Questions? Comments? Ideas? Please contact me below! I would love to hear what you think and how I could improve upon these ideas.