Great Ideas: Using Service-Learning and Differentiated Instruction to Help Your Students Succeed

In her book, Great Ideas: Using Service-Learning and Differentiated Instruction to Help Your Students Succeed, P. J. Gent describes service-learning as “service-based learning while helping to meet the needs of others, the community or the environment” (p. 2). In this idea-filled book, she provides an overview of the use of service-learning within an inclusive classroom environment. This text is as much about differentiated learning as it is about service-learning, and it provides clear and compelling examples of their integration. The first three chapters provide an introduction to the history of and rationale for service-learning and the implementation of service-learning within an inclusive framework. The remaining seven chapters detail the steps and implementation of service-learning: preparation, investigation, action, reflection, evaluation, celebration, and continuation. Each chapter opens with a vignette placing the use of service-learning within a classroom context. Those vignettes and student profiles were some of the strongest parts of the...