DE LA SALLE HIGH SCHOOL

Service Learning Project

“Enter to learn, Leave to serve.”

Department of Science

Sophomore Biology

Mrs. Viki Acquistapace

2004-2005

During the last two weeks of October, students in Mrs. Acquistapace’s Sophomore Biology courses investigate brand-name cereals for their nutritional properties. While students are organizing their analysis of brand-name cereals, they are also collecting boxes of cereal for St. David’s Pantry, a local agency responsible for food distribution to the poor and homeless.

Procedure: the following is a protocol for completing this service-learning project.

• The curricular component relates to Nutrition and Digestion
• All cereals in the local grocery store are catalogued
• All nutritional labels are compiled
• Three diets are researched: the diet of a six-year old boy in a third-world country, the diet of a six-year old boy homeless in America, and the diet of a middle-class American six-year old boy
• Given the nutritional labels for ALL cereals and the background information of the three typical diets in the third-world, homeless America, and middle-class America, students recommend the top three cereals for the life and health of each boy
• While this research is taking place, students organize a school-wide cereal drive which benefits St. David’s Pantry (at least 1500 boxes)

Evaluation: Mrs. Acquistapace noted that coordinating the group work for the analysis was challenging due the incremental nature of the process. Despite this hurdle, the collection of cereal was a great success with over 1500 boxes of cereal collected for donation to St. David’s pantry. Mrs. Acquistapace is planning on doing this service-learning project in the future, though she will prepare a “reflection” component and provide letters with tax information for corporate donations.

Preflection: No preflection exercise was completed with this service-learning project.

Reflection: No reflection exercise was completed with this service-learning project.