In this lesson, the students learn to use their voice to say something to make the world a better place. This is an opportunity to demonstrate and feel the impact of kindness, inclusion, and listening on a caring community. Students learn from a community helper about the needs they observe in the community. They make and donate a "calming box" so the tool may help youth calm themselves. Use this at the beginning of the year to set a tone and learn skills of effective language that are good for all. 

Students organize and implement a school-based recycling plan based on a one-day lunchroom waste audit.

Adapt this one-period lesson plan for your grade level and follow it with a simple and powerful service project for Earth Day. The reflection brings learning and service impact together. 

We discuss the joy of giving, as well as various ways to give through doing kind acts for people in the community. We learn how #GivingTuesday is a day of giving that combines efforts with others around the world to make a big difference. Children follow their own interests to make someone smile and promote kindness as an instrument of change.

Analyze quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr, about being loving and inclusive. Design posters to encourage action and diverse community building.  

This lesson focuses on the meaning and benefits of gratitude. A book about a gratitude jar challenges us to brainstorm things they are grateful for right now. For their service project, participants 'deliver gratitude' to others in the school community by saying "thank you" and observing the reactions of the person they thanked, as well as how they feel. They will keep a gratitude jar and add to it each day; they may look at their entries on tough days. They may add to others' jars with kind words.

Students learn about nutrition for healthy bodies and encourage others to make healthy choices. Students learn about healthy choices by playing a group game. In the end they learn that when everyone is healthy, we are all able to do our best.

Students explore the meaning of community and describe traits of a healthy classroom community. They develop a class definition of a healthy community and learn how to promote healthy habits in the school community.

Students design a plan to make themselves and their school community healthier. They brainstorm what it means to get moving and exercise, and they see that increasing physical fitness activity is good for everyone and brings a community together. Students will choose or design a service project to encourage schoolmates and the community to increase their daily fitness activity.

Students explore the components of the Preamble of the U.S.  Constitution and apply them to their own lives, with a particular emphasis on philanthropy. This lesson is designed for Citizenship/Constitution Day (September 17) and connects students to the community-building focus of the Constitution and how it relates personally to their lives and action.