Learning to Give, Philanthropy education resources that teach giving and civic engagement
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Unit Purpose:
Students learn about and complete prewriting activities for three styles of writing: news stories, personal narratives, and persuasive essays. As they write and reflect, students increase their understanding of the impact of their philanthropy. They each write and publish one piece of writing as an act of advocacy to raise awareness of community needs and encourage active involvement in solutions. Stories may be published in print, weblog, podcast, or another form of media.
Unit Duration:
Five 50-minute class periods, plus time to write, edit, and publish one piece of writing
Unit Objectives:
The learner will:
- browse the newspaper to gain a sense of the types of stories offered.
- review Freedom of the Press in the first amendment.
- define philanthropy.
- highlight interesting articles related to philanthropy.
- analyze and discuss the characteristics of a quality news article.
- identify the five Ws in a news article.
- write a lead paragraph for a news article about his or her own service experience.
- recall specific events, emotions, and impact of a recent service-learning experience.
- write about an experience using revealing details.
- plan a personal narrative using prewriting techniques.
- use a graphic organizer to identify the parts of a persuasive piece of writing.
- list three pros and cons to support the main thesis.
- complete Attachment One: Supporting Facts and Statistics to recognize good supporting details in an argument.
- fill in a graphic organizer to plan the outline for a persuasive essay.
- write either a news article, a personal narrative, or a persuasive essay about a philanthropic experience.
Unit Assessment:
- A pre-test and post-test are available for this unit. The pre-test may be found in Lesson One: Attachment Two and the post-test may be found in Lesson Three: Attachment Three.
- Base student assessment on class participation, small group work, completion of prewriting activities, and the final writing piece (either news story, personal narrative, or persuasive essay).
Notes for Teaching:
This unit focuses on writing and telling our stories about community service and other forms of giving time, talent, and treasure for the common good. If you haven't introduced your students to the concept of philanthropy, go to Learning to Give Unit: Community Connections, Lesson One: A Plethora of Philanthropy to provide background on giving for the common good. Refer to Learning to Give Unit: Getting to Know the Community, Lesson Three: Exploring Community Needs to guide students on identifying community needs. These lessons help students choose the service project that is the basis of the writing activities in this lesson. If your class is already involved in a service project, you do not need to refer to these background lessons.
Since the theme for each of the writing pieces is civic engagement and service, a student service experience before or during the lessons is required.
State Curriculum and Philanthropy Theme Frameworks:
See individual lessons for benchmark detail.
Lessons Developed By:
Betsy Flikkema
Associate Director
Learning to Give
Dennis VanHaitsma
Curriculum Consultant
Learning to Give
All rights reserved. Permission is granted to freely use this information for nonprofit (noncommercial), educational purposes only. Copyright must be acknowledged on all copies.
