Make a Difference Ideas

Fast Facts

Plan for K-12

Guide for High School

Guide for Middle School

Entry Form

Completion Form

Planning Guide

Organizational Tools for K-12
Help your students bring out the best in themselves by helping others. Use these ideas as a guide to develop a Make A Difference Day project that addresses community needs, improves teamwork, and fosters goal setting. Even the youngest kids can get involved. We offer plenty of suggestions from the simple to the ambitious. Aspects of your project may occur during the school week, but remember that a significant part of the work must take place on Make A Difference Day, Saturday, October 27th.

Why Participate?

Student Benefits
• Learn the value of helping others.
• Develop a sense of civic responsibility and awareness of community needs.
• Build self-esteem by accomplishing something worthwhile.
• Improve teamwork.
• Enhance academic skills such as research, communication, and math reasoning.
• Develop problem-solving skills.
• Enhance awareness of diversity and develop mutual respect.
  

School Benefits
• Sustain student motivation and improve academic skills.
• Enhance curriculum by extending learning beyond classroom.
• Strengthen relationship between school and community.
• Improve school image in community.
• Foster sense of caring in students.
  

Curriculum Connections
It’s easy to relate a Make A Difference Day project to the curriculum by using the teaching philosophy of service-learning. This increasingly popular teaching method connects community service with academic learning, personal growth, and civic responsibility.

• Science: While studying local plant life, students can clean up a park or nature area. As part of an ecology unit, students can monitor water quality in a nearby river or lake.
• Social Studies: Students can interview senior citizens about community service in years past or about a historical event they experienced.
• Math: Calculate the amount of food needed to feed a family of four for a week. Students can use the information to organize a food drive, charting the results or determining how many families have been helped.
• Language Arts: Students can write and share stories or poems encouraging younger children to avoid drugs. Use the stories as the centerpiece of an anti-drug campaign.
• Health: As part of a unit on nutrition, help prepare a meal at a shelter. Or plan a week’s menu for a family, collect the items and deliver to a needy family.
• Art: Students create an activity book for younger children. Make multiple copies. Distribute with crayons to public health clinics and emergency waiting rooms.
  

General Make A Difference Day Ideas for Students
When considering service activities with community agencies, include their representatives in the planning stages to ensure that your project will meet the needs of those agencies. The United Way of Calvert County can help you find an agency to work with, as well as a representative.