Banding Together-Nicole DelBosque, Shelby Buchanan, Sarah Smith, Alyssa Gebhart

Grade Level: 3rd
Content: The GES Guardian Angel Fund & possibly Haiti
Services Needed: The Guardian Angel Fund helps support those in the Gray Elementary community that are going through hardships (with donations of money). Also, the country of Haiti has been in need since the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010. The money we raise will be split between the two causes equally, if our profit allows.
Service Idea: The students in our four classes will make bracelets to sell to people at the school to raise funds for these causes. We will teach the students how to make them and they will promote/advertise and sell the bracelets.
Preparation: We will discuss what it means to help people in our community as well as people around the world. The students will brainstorm ideas and reasons to help others. We will do an interactive writing lesson to compose a letter to stores such as Wal-Mart to ask for donations of supplies to make the bracelets.
Demonstration: We have learned how to make the bracelets and will teach our students in groups how to make them. There are two styles, one more complex than the other to allow for differentiation.
Curriculum Connections: ENGLISH/LANGUAGE ARTS (interactive writing lesson, making posters, writing blurps for the announcements), SOCIAL STUDIES (locating our town and the country of Haiti on a map, supply and demand, producers and consumers), MATH (making change, profit, addition & subtraction).

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First we presented the idea of having the students make bracelets to raise money for a charity to the teachers in our grade level meeting. The teachers were supportive of this idea and suggested we raise funds for the GES Guardian Angel Find that goes to faculty/families in our very own school. We agreed to this idea.
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The four of us met later to discuss how we are going to present the idea to the students, how to get money to start the fundraiser, and how to teach them how to make the bracelets. We decided that we'd all utilize days we don't have an exploratory to begin the project. We'd begin with an interactive writing lesson where we write to a store such as Wal-Mart or a local craft store to ask for a donation of supplies to fund our project. We also set up a time to meet with the principal (Mr. Patterson) to propose our idea.
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We met with our school principal and presented our project proposal to him. He approved our idea, and liked the idea of contributing the money to both a local cause as well as a global cause (Haiti). He instructed us to fill out a fundraiser approval form so he could submit it to the board office. Our fundraiser was approved by the board office.

PROOF OF APPROVED PLAN

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Each of us led our classes in a brainstorming session, and we guided their ideas toward the bracelets. Utilizing interactive writing (where different students physically contribute to the writing piece), we created letters to various corporations asking for donations of craft string. The next day, we edited our rough draft for spelling, punctuation, proper letter formation, etc.

Due to time constraints, the four of us decided to purchase the inexpensive craft string with our own money instead of actually sending the letters to the businesses. However, we told the students that the string was in fact donated so that they felt their efforts were rewarded. We decided that we needed to do this to get the ball rolling on the fundraiser, yet we wanted our students to feel a sense of community; that they're hard work resulted in a positive reaction from these companies. The craft string was fairly inexpensive, so it would have been a little silly to request such a tiny donation. It could have potentially taken weeks or even months to hear back from the businesses!

We allotted about two weeks for the production of the bracelets, utilizing any idol time and days we had no exploratory. A handful of children in my own class were with another teacher at the time I taught the students how to make the bracelets, but the ones who did learn ended up teaching the others how! Ms. Delbosque had the great suggestion to tape a few "in progress" bracelets to any spare/out of the way table so that if students finish morning work or class assignments early they always have something to work on during that extra time.

Advertising: Our students made posters and signs to display around the school. We also encouraged a few brave souls to create a morning announcement to say over the school intercom (they loved this---they felt famous!). During our non-exploratory days, each of us walked around to predetermined grade levels with a few students so that each class in the school got an up-close and personal advertisement.

The students made our first intercom announcement on Thursday, March 18th, but due to a 3-day weekend, the bracelet sales were pathetic at best on Monday morning the 22nd (we sold 4!). However, our students walked around to each table in the lunchroom during breakfast time and advertised yet again. The students and teachers from our four classes all wore a bracelet to sort of get the trend out there.

By the second and third days we sold $150 worth of bracelets, and we're not finished yet! We're even considering extending the sale dates another week. More to come!

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Our fundraising project was incredibly successful, exceeding our goal of $150-$200. We raised a smidge over $300, and have turned the money into the front office to be deposited into the "Guardian Angels" fund account. We collectively decided not to send a portion of the money to a Haiti Relief fund, only because we are aware of a LOT of families around our community that can and will benefit from the donation. The head of the Guardian Angels fund has offered to write each of us (student teachers) a letter confirming our participation and support so that we may put it in our portfolio for future use.

PROOF FROM RECIPIENT:

As for the most important part, our students; below are a few snippets from the journal entries we had them compose post-service. Some questions we suggested they use to begin their thinking include but were not limited to:

*How do you feel about the fact that together we raised $300?
*Did you enjoy this project?
*How might you feel if you were the recipient of some of this money?
*Was this difficult?
*What kind of reaction do you think the recipients will have when they get the money?
*What does the word "team" mean to you?
*Did you enjoy working with your peers to help others?

"If I was poor/homeless and I received the money I would feel great and think somebody cared for me. Doing this project made me think and care about the poor."

"It made me feel good, because I know its going to help a lot of people in need."

"I am proud what I did with my friends. It made me feel like I was important and they are too. I was very proud that I did something nice for once. I am happy and will always remember."

"I feel like I am being a good person. I feel that the people in need would feel appreciated. If I was that person and I got some money I would feel very thankful."

"I'm glad that we made the bracelets. I hope this helps the people in need then that will really make me happy."

"I feel good about helping people in need. Because I love helping people the best I can. I've helped lots of people but not like this. It's really fun helping people. Everyone should help somebody. I'm glad we came up with this idea."

"It makes me feel good to let people know that we care for them."

"I love it when we work as a team."

"We are very proud of ourselves. It makes us feel really good. The people that are getting the money will feel good. It makes me feel good in the inside for doing this."