America SCORES Kids Give Back Through Service Learning

The America SCORES Spring Season curriculum, Writing for the Community, uses literature and creative writing to encourage kids to learn more about their local communities and to feel empowered to positively impact those around them. Each team learns about service learning through the creation and completion of a community project. At the season's end, each team shares what they have learned and what project they completed with their school community and their families in an event called SHOUT. 
Our first season of Writing for the Curriculum was awesome! Some of our schools made posters or displays to show at the SUN Showcase; other schools did skits or performances to either present their project or to serve as part of an awareness campaign. Below is a brief description of what projects the schools completed and how they chose to present what they accomplished:

Oliver: These students completed a research project about family heritage to help promote knowledge of their school's diversity. Each student researched their family heritage and then created a presentation (accompanied by a poster board) to teach other students and promote cultural understanding.

Parklane: Parklane created a great school beautification project. The kids painted wooden signs to both make the school garden more beautiful and to remind people not to walk on the plants and not to pick the flowers. They then presented their project in front of the other students and families at the SUN Showcase.

Barnes:  These kids completed an anti bullying campaign to improve their school community. They presented their posters and gave a performance at the SHINE Fiesta.

Whitman: The students helped to plan and implement certain components of Whitman's Cinco de Mayo celebration. The kids volunteered at the event by making signs, helping to run games, and helping to clean up. A poster with lots of photos of the America SCORES kids working hard and participating at the event can be found on display at Whitman Elementary!

Markham: The Markham America SCORES team researched water conservation and created a wonderful awareness campaign. They created posters to hang up around the school and performed an educational presentation in front of students and parents. The performance contained skits to demonstrate "good" and "bad" behavior, poems about the importance of water conservation, and a quiz to test what the audience learned!

Davis: The America SCORES kids helped with Davis' Soccer de Mayo family day. More information can be found in AC Portland's most recent blog entry!

James John: The kids at James John learned about homelessness and hunger in Portland and created a canned food drive. The cans that they collected have been given to the Oregon Food Bank. The kids created a poster to display at the SUN Showcase which both presents their project and teaches other students and their families about hunger and homelessness in Portland.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE TEAMS ON THEIR GREAT PROJECTS!!!!!