The Tikkun Project
Lesson
3
Researching Local Organizations
Concept
Understanding how organizations already address a problem builds the background knowledge needed to design an effective response of our own and reveals that lasting solutions are usually built into a system, not one-off acts of generosity.
Focus Question
What are the most useful insights we can gather from the actions of local experts and organizations?
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Language, Strand A (Literacy Connections and Applications), A1 — Transferable Skills, Grade 4: Gather, organize, and synthesize information from multiple sources to build background knowledge on a real-world topic.
Thinking & Learning Skills
ATL — Research Skills: Gathering and organizing information from multiple sources; synthesizing findings from different group members into one coherent picture.
ATL — Thinking Skills: Using a graphic organizer to structure cause/impact reasoning.
Learner Profile: Knowledgeable, Inquirers.
Context
Builds directly on Lesson 2's criteria. Introduces the Problem Tree, which accumulates evidence across the rest of the unit, and prepares students with real background knowledge before they meet guest experts so those visits produce informed, targeted questions rather than generic ones.
Lesson Outline
LEARN HOW TO USE THE "PROBLEM TREE" THINKING ORGANIZER
Display the Problem Tree visibly. "Poverty" goes on the trunk. Root causes go in the roots; impacts/outcomes go in the branches. Ask students to recall the narratives from Lesson 1 and name any causes or impacts connected to poverty as experienced by the characters (e.g., in Bagels From Benny, the man couldn't afford food, so "hunger" is an impact; in Fly Away Home, the father doesn't have a job, so underemployment is a cause). Add these to the tree, connecting causes to impacts with lines. Note: the Problem Tree is used throughout the unit — recurring causes can be drawn larger as evidence accumulates.
RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS
Divide the class into "home" groups, each assigned one partner organization to research. Each group becomes the class's resident experts on that organization, using resources that answer six guiding questions: What actions does this organization take to address the causes/impacts of poverty? Which causes/impacts are their main focus? How do they measure their impact? Do they focus on direct service, root causes, or both? How can individuals support their work? What's most useful for our own action plan?
Then reshuffle into new groups containing one "expert" from each organization. In the reshuffled groups, use a placemat organizer — a shared sheet divided into sections, one per group member, with a shared space in the middle — so each student individually records what they learned about their organization before the group negotiates a shared summary in the center.
Add newly-learned causes and impacts to the Problem Tree.
ANALYZE AND REVISE THE PLAN AS A GROUP
Display the list of potential actions from Lesson 2. Discuss: Where might each organization's actions rank on our class's version of Rambam's Ladder? What can we learn from this research that would revise or improve our initial ideas? What questions do we still have for the organizations?
Introduce Leviticus 19:9–10 and 23:22 (Leket, Peah, Shikchah — leaving the corners of the field and fallen produce for the poor). Ask: Rambam's ladder ranks individual acts of giving. This text describes something different — a rule built permanently into how a farmer runs their field, every single harvest, whether or not any specific poor person shows up. How is that different from a single act of tzedakah?
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
Jigsaw: guarantees that every student both goes deep on one organization and hears a synthesized picture of all of them, without any single group having to research everything.
Placemat: protects against one confident voice dominating the synthesis — every student's research has to show up on the page before the group agrees on what matters most.
Leviticus 19:9–10, 23:22 as a contrast text: a genuinely new text for the unit that gives students the vocabulary to describe what they're noticing in their organization research — the best organizations aren't just repeating one-time acts of kindness, they've built systems, the way Leket/Peah/Shikchah builds poverty relief into the structure of the field itself, not into any one farmer's individual generosity.