The Tikkun Project
Lesson
4
Learning Through Action
Concept
Direct, hands-on encounters with people doing this work test our assumptions about which actions are actually effective more powerfully than research alone.
Focus Question
Which strategies used by local organizations can most effectively be adapted for our own plan?
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Language, Strand B (Oral and Non-Verbal Communication), Grade 4: Apply active listening and speaking skills and strategies to understand and communicate meaning in formal contexts, including with visiting community members.
Health & Physical Education, Healthy Living Strand D, Grade 4: Demonstrate an understanding of how their actions can affect their own well-being and that of others in their community.
Thinking & Learning Skills
ATL — Social Skills: Collaborating respectfully with community members; asking purposeful follow-up questions in a live, unscripted setting.
ATL — Thinking Skills: Evaluating a real action against established criteria in real time, rather than a hypothetical one.
Learner Profile: Caring, Risk-Takers.
Context
A repeatable lesson structure meant to recur 23 times as students meet different partner organizations. Each iteration feeds new evidence into the Problem Tree and Ranking Ladder, and each guest visit should leave students with sharper, more specific criteria than the visit before it.
Lesson Outline
MEET THE EXPERT
Invite a representative from each researched organization to speak with the class and lead a short activity. Guest experts begin by sharing information about their organization's work.
ASK CLARIFYING QUESTIONS
Students ask any remaining relevant questions from the lists they built in Lesson 3, tailored to this specific organization.
PRACTICE TAKING ACTION
Examples: students write letters to a city councillor with an advocacy-org expert; students assemble personal care kits with a street-outreach organization expert; students prepare meals for shelter clients with a shelter worker.
REFLECTING ON WHAT WE DID
Structure the post-visit reflection around three prompts: Connect — how does what we just did connect to what we already knew from our research about this organization? Extend — what's a new idea, cause, or impact this visit extended our thinking toward, something we hadn't considered before? Challenge — what's still confusing, or what's a question or assumption this visit challenged?
Students then: add new causes or impacts to the Problem Tree (from Extend); suggest where the action would rank on Rambam's Ladder; suggest revisions to their list of potential actions (from Challenge).
(Note: this structure repeats 2–3 times across the unit, ideally with three different experts/organizations.)
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
Connect, Extend, Challenge (Project Zero thinking routine): a better fit here than an open-ended "what did you learn" prompt because it separates confirmation of prior research from genuinely new thinking — which matters for a Problem Tree/Ranking Ladder that's supposed to accumulate real evidence, not just restate what students already believed going in.