Our Paying it Forward project 2011

The Grade 5Bs and I have been involved in a project called PAYING IT FORWARD (2011). The project is recorded on a Wiki called 'Paying It Forward' created by Mrs Beal. (http://paying-it-forward-project.wikispaces.com/) On this wiki you will notice that five other schools have joined us in this project, and they will be uploading their information soon.

The class that is busy with this Paying It Forward project is a Grade 5 class at Fish Hoek Primary School. Here is a picture of the class with their teacher in their classroom. The teacher responsible for the project is the computer teacher, Fiona Beal, who worked with the class teacher Mrs Gail Beagley in setting up the project.





Description of the project
There are a number of organisations in our little town of Fish Hoek that really strive to serve the community needs without wanting anything in return. We often read about what they do in the newspapers or we hear of them through people who have been helped by them. We decided that we would have a tea in our classrooms and invite representatives from the various communities that we are interested in to come and tell us all about what they do. We would listen carefully and then break into groups and think of ways to help the different communities. Each group would then work on what they have decided to do for the organisation.


Our Community Tea
Here is a photo of the different people that came to our 'Community Tea' as we called it.


*Starting on the left we have Mrs Lovick who represents Living Hope's work amongst schools where they teach the children the right way to live.
*Next to her is Lauren Denne who represents Living Hope's work with children teaching them arts and crafts at children's clubs.
*Mr Holgate is from a loal church where they are holding a fund-raising concert to raise money for the Sunflower Fund which is one of the groups represented here
* Next we have Emily who represents TEARS (the Emma Animal Rescue Society).
*Next to her is Kirsten from the Sunflower Fund which has a bone marrow registry for cancer sufferers.
*The last person sitting on the chairs is Mrs Snowball who represents Baby Safe, an organisation that helps young unmarried moms who are not sure how to look after their babies.


Maps showing where the communities represented are situated.
In our next computer lesson we found where these communities are situated using Google Earth and Google Maps. We used a programme called Zap Grab to copy and paste these into Word documents so that we could attach them to our wiki.


Here is an example.



Group interviews
After our community tea we broke into groups, and each group interviewed a different person to find out what the difficulties are that the organisations face. It was very interesting to hear of all the good things that are happening in our little town right before our eyes. There are so many people who care about others!