January 2018 Grant Recipients
Word Play
Eva Griffin - Fruitland High School, Fruitland
$750.00
This project will purchase card and board games to build and retain language concepts. They will be available to individual students, classrooms, library groups and to all students for summer use when reading skills regress. Family and group interaction will strengthen literacy beyond the student population. Target groups include struggling readers, migrant students, and English Language Learners. Games will focus on spelling, vocabulary, matching spoken words with written words, developing the awareness of individual sounds within words, and other language tools. Games are useful, effective, and enjoyable. Board games provide many educational and teaching benefits and have proven their value.
Prelude to Prints
Karla Miller - Castleford School, Castleford
$747.19
This grant will fund a visual arts project of linoprinting. This is a printing method using a sheet of linoleum, in which a subtractive cutting method is used to remove the parts of linoleum that one does not want inked. Linoleum cutting and printing is a good starter project for students in the genre of printmaking, because linoleum is easy to work with and cut. Prelude to Prints will begin with studying the history of relief printing. Students will develop “Studio Habits of Mind” which will help them to succeed across many curricular areas. According to Harvard’s Project Zero, there are eight dispositions that an artist uses. These dispositions, called ‘Studio Habits of Mind,’ include developing one’s craft, engaging and persisting, envisioning, expressing, observing, reflecting, stretching and exploring, and understanding the art community. These dispositions offer a framework for critical thinking that spans across many educational disciplines, and thus benefits students in immeasurable ways.
Going Mobile
Bob Santi - Middleton Middle School, Middleton
$738.00
Going Mobile is a project to place mobile application development skills into middle school students' hands. Through the use of MIT's App Inventor 2 application, students will create their own Android mobile applications. This is a stepping stone to higher level coding and application development and ultimately to 21st century jobs. We have been learning how to develop Android mobile applications using MIT's App Inventor 2 as a supplement to our Computer Programming class. Over this length of time, testing our mobile apps has always been our biggest issue. The online website that we use to view our mobile apps through the emulator provided by App Inventor 2 updates and changes without warning every couple of months, making it almost impossible for our IT department to keep up with our needs.
At this time without usable emulator consistency, testing the applications is very time consuming and becomes a barrier to student learning. Therefore, the need for some type of mobile testing device is important to the continued growth of the program. With the addition of mobile testing devices in the Computer Programming class, I expect to fully cover 100% of the mobile application activities along with providing the students time to complete an Individual Project. With the addition of a Gaming Unit to current curriculum, I also expect a growth in the popularity of the overall Programming class.
Measure the Weather Inside and Out
Jared Gee - Sugar-Salem High School, Sugar City
$750.00
We will first be acquiring a weather station that will be mounted on school grounds. That weather data will be published to our school’s website and will be joined to Wunderground's weather monitoring network. In this way, students will be able to see differences in weather from station to station in local regions, as well as learn how to be a part of a larger scientific endeavor by maintaining and using information from our own weather station.
This past term, our students designed an in-class lab to allow them to experiment with plant growth. We would like to leverage that grow lab and some sensors we already own into real-time monitoring and control of the lab’s climate. The sensors we own and will purchase will be hooked up to Vernier's Logger Pro software through the LabQuest Mini interface which will allow us to monitor and react to changes in over time. Combining that monitoring with fans and watering equipment will allow us to have a plant grow lab that automatically maintains the experimental environment students would like to test. We will also combine our long-term weather data from the weather station with climate comparisons around the world to open up the possibility of experiments comparing how plants grow in different climates, giving students even more flexibility to design experiments to understand the world around them.
Bringing Grade Level Materials to Our ELL Students
Devan Hoehn - Wood River High School, Hailey
173.10
Our school has moved to the co-teaching model for our ELL students. Therefore, we have to tweak our curriculum to meet the needs of our general education students and our ELL students. We are excited about this challenge as it gives English language learners a chance to access grade level curriculum while learning the language, with hopes of closing the achievement gap. According to ELL research and the WIDA standards, one way to help ELL students access grade level materials is by using graphics and pictures. Our hope is by using graphic novels, it will help our students better understand the story, therefore, helping them be able to articulate their ideas and participate in class discussions.The pictures and the use of modern English will help English language learners better understand the main points and the story in general.
No Fear Shakespeare graphic novels help take away the challenges of the Shakespeare language, while still challenging them with acquiring the English vocabulary and understanding the content of the story. It gives ELL learners a chance to access grade level curriculum while helping them develop their English language skills simultaneously.
Music Instruments
Shawn Lopez - Rolling Hills Public Charter School, Boise
$750.00
This grant money will help purchase musical Orff instruments that will allow students at any skill in music to explore and create music that sounds good. Orff does not discriminate and allows every student to promote creative expression no matter their musical aptitude. Grant money received for our music program/classroom will go to fund instruments that will be tools used to promote unity and belonging. Other skills acquired would be learning how to work together and depend on one another in learning musical productions. Lastly, the ability to share their musical accomplishments with other through performance will bring a sense of satisfaction and pride for every student.
These instruments will allow all students (including title one, special education students, and English Language Learners) to have the same advantage in participating in musical lessons and productions. Our school participates in community outreaches throughout the year. We also do a talent show in the spring and events like these allow students to potentially utilize these instruments individually as well performing for fellow students, staff and the outside community.
Digital Library Collection
Michelle Slagel - Kimberly Middle School, Kimberly
$750.00
The find from this grant will diversify the Kimberly Middle School library's collection by including digital materials for students who are auditory learners. This library serves more than 400 students in grades 6-8 and currently has no auditory materials to check out to students. As of now, the library houses approximately 8000 materials, but these materials only consist of physical materials: none are digital - in any format. I would like to enhance the library by adding playaways, and other digital materials in both fiction and non-fiction.
According to the American Library Association's position statement on digital content and e-books in school libraries, "Today’s twenty-first century students must be able to discover, analyze, evaluate, interpret, and communicate ideas, information and knowledge in a variety of ways. Because school library programs are instrumental in teaching these skills, their collections must include a wide variety of formats beyond printed books." My goal as the librarian of Kimberly Middle School is to collect a variety of formatted information, including, but not limited to digital materials. Not only would these materials benefit auditory learners, but would introduce all learners to the benefit of digital learning. It is my hope that by the time students reached the high school level, each would be accustomed to learning in a variety of manners.
Special Education Edmark Reading Program
Leslie Jensen - Filer Intermediate School, Filer
$649.00
The grant funds will help with the purchase of a K-3 reading program, which my 25 special needs students so desperately need to be successful in school. As of today, I do not have a strong reading curriculum for my students and the School District does not have adequate funds to purchase this curriculum.
The curriculum I desire is the Edmark Reading Program for grades K-3. This program is highly touted as the "one that works" when working with special needs students in 4th-6th grades. The Edmark Program helps students who learn differently and are in need of an alternative to phonics. My students also need the carefully sequenced, highly repetitive word recognition method used by Edmark. The expected outcome for this project would be increased student learning in reading, as documented by data collection and observations. Perhaps the most rewarding outcome would be that my students would see themselves as confident readers.
Music for Minors
Annette Harvey - Glenns Ferry Elementary, Glenns Ferry
$134.98
This grant will help provide music time for our preschool. Studies have shown that a music education benefits the areas of math, reading, and social skills. I have noticed several students have an aptitude for music and rhythm. I have developed a series of lessons using YouTube, best practices from preschool websites, and my background in band and choir. Because of the students' short attention span, the lessons last 5-10 minutes. The class has started their musical training by learning clapping patterns. Learning the names of the note values (quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and rests) will be taught at this time. As the class progresses, a parent is making rhythm sticks for the class to aid in their learning. Since rhythm also aids in coordination, rhythm sticks are used in P.E. classes. The next phase would be to add instruments.
I have talked with the music teacher about the possibility of including the preschool in the Elementary Spring concert, showcasing the preschoolers playing their instruments in rhythm together. Parents and members of the community are welcome to attend the performance.