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Grand Island Education Foundation awards classroom mini-grants
Grand Island Education Foundation Board members surprised teachers and students in the Grand Island Public Schools Dec. 11 when they arrived at schools to award 15 classroom mini-grants.
Students and teachers were thrilled when Sophia Armstrong (age 5) rode into classrooms with a backpack full of opportunities. Each classroom teacher "unpacked the backpack" to reveal a grant award.
The Grand Island Education Foundation awards mini-grants in two rounds on an annual basis. Mini-grants are designed to fund educational opportunities for students that are not available through the school district's general budget.
This is the sixth annual mini-grant cycle for the Grand Island Education Foundation. During the past six years, 82 mini-grants totaling $66,229 funded projects across the district. Grants have benefited more than 16,000 students.
The 2009-2010 mini-grant fund was established via the "Add it Up to Opportunity!" Staff and Board fund drive and the "Back to School" Community Campaign held during the past year.
For the 2009-2010 school year, 15 mini-grants totaling $13,044 were awarded. Grants range from $200 to $2,400. Approximately 3,000 students will benefit from a classroom mini-grant this school year.
Round One grant winners, grant amounts, and project titles were:
*Irene Cuellar, Gates Elementary School, $550, "Padres y Hijos Leyendo Para Un Furturo Mas Brillante." The program will send home a backpack on weekends with each second- and third- grade newcomer student. The backpack will include a book and a journal. The goals are to get the English language and books in the home and build a strong partnership between the family and the school. This program will impact 15 students per year plus their family and siblings.
*Nancy Chavez and Susan Stoeger, Seedling Mile Elementary School, $625, "Young Authors' Day: A Celebration of Writers 2010." Author Jean Lukesh will explain how she uses the writing process to write nonfiction, about the Pawnee in particular. Nancy Fairbanks will share Pawnee history from an artistís point of view, demonstrating how to make pinch and coil pots. Students will write about their experiences using voices of Pawnee children. All 120 kindergarten through fifth-grade students will participate.
*Patty Brown, Wasmer Elementary School, $513, "Reel Them In." This grant will purchase 26 CDs and books. These are unabridged word-for-word winning books for use in the school districtís Daily Five reading strategy. Up to 135 students will be affected by this project.
*April Patterson, Leah Faltin, LaNae Minton, and Kellie Prather, Jefferson Elementary School, $883, "Razzle Dazzle Reading Fun with My Family." This grant will provide students with the opportunity to take home a bag of quality literature of varying genres to read with and to their family several times a week. Sixty-eight kindergarten students will be impacted.
*Tracy Morrow, Gates Elementary School, $886, "The Newcomers' Quilt." This project is designed to reach out to the new immigrants of Grand Island and to give them the opportunity to share their stories with the community. The Newcomers' Quilt is a story quilt with blocks made by individual students and their families that will share memories from their homeland and dreams of the future. The program will impact the fourth- and fifth-grade newcomers.
*Nancy Kirschbaum, Grand Island Senior High School, $2,400, "Podcasts and the iPod in the World Language Classroom." This program will use iPods for auditory or visually impaired students and other students with learning disabilities as well as a differentiation tool for the entire class. Approximately 120 to 150 students in ninth grade through 12th grade will be impacted.
Round Two grant winners, grant amounts, and project titles were:
*Janel Keyes, Emalee Nuss, Linda Dunham, Daylene Fox, Janell Bowman, and Tess Westover, Howard Elementary School, $200, "Got Bugs?" Second-grade students (approximately 100 students) will expand their learning from classroom teaching of insects by reading vibrant, true-to-life trade books. These books will help students make connections and build background knowledge. In addition, these books can assist in compensating for experiential deficits in economically-disadvantaged students.
*Lacey Westerby, Grand Island Senior High School, $1,600, "Classroom Technology for Current Events." This grant will fund an ELMO Teaching Tool. It is a multi-purpose tool that can help to expand the current event knowledge of environmental science students. The ELMO tool will assist in presenting current event topics regularly in class and also reach the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities that many students require to learn. This project involves approximately 200 to 250 high school students per year.
*Al Neuhaus, Scott Walker, Richard Soto, Susan Stuhr, and Teshawna Sawyer, Alternative Middle School -- located in Walnut Middle School, $400, "Social Skill Development Through Recreation and Exercise with the Utilization of Video Technology." The development of appropriate social skills as addressed in the Boys Town Social Skills curriculum is extremely important for students attending the Alternative Middle School. This grant will fund a Nintendo Wii -- an enhancement to the recreation curriculum for the purpose of providing exercise, an opportunity for social skills development, and general reinforcement of appropriate school behaviors. Approximately 20 seventh- and eighth-grade students will be affected this year alone.
*Amy Anderson, Howard Elementary School, $700, "Living History." During Nebraska History studies, Fax Gilbert will work with Howard students to bring Nebraska's history to life. The students will perform in costume to demonstrate things such as Native American life, pioneer living, immigrant migration, and early schools. Sixty fourth-graders will participate and perform, and 60 third-graders will be the audience.
*Lin Gillam, Shoemaker Elementary School, $350, "Literacy Alive in Daily Five!" This grant will fund a cross-curricular listening library of books and CDs, word work manipulative for hands-on reading success, and storage/organizational tools used in the Daily Five management plan to help students accomplish literacy learning tasks while the teacher works with small groups of students. Approximately 21 first-graders will be impacted with this grant.
*Linda Fickes, Coleen Fagan, Beth Lamken, Jody Nissen, Jessica Raun, and Deb Glover, Howard Elementary School, $1,200, "Get In Touch With Learning." This grant will purchase an iPod Touch for each first-grade classroom to enhance learning in all curricular areas such as reading fluency, phonemic awareness, math fluency, oral language skills, and vocabulary development. The goal is to positively impact assessment scores. All 100 first-grade students will be part of this project.
*Jolyne Westerby, Grand Island Senior High School, $1,600, "Excuse Buster." The Excuse Buster is a project that will help all students but is designed to specifically focus on students with disabilities that interfere with taking effective notes or those students who have attendance issues and have not been in class to experience presentations. A document camera will capture entire daily presentations that can be transferred to a computer and printed for student use outside of class. Approximately 140 to 400 ninth- through 12th-graders will be impacted each year.
*Karen Kropp, Grand Island Senior High School, $937, "Parenting Student Enrichment." This grant will purchase materials for the Parenting curriculum at Grand Island Senior High. The purchases will be used in the classroom to enhance and enrich student learning to help them become responsible and better prepared parents.
*Fawn Gernstein and Paula Poppe, Grand Island Senior High School, $200, "Bait the Hook." This project will give below-grade-level readers opportunities to read high-interest books and allow for interaction with authors. The goals are to allow more reading time and more effective reading time for ninth- and 10th-grade students. The technology component will increase reader connections. One hundred students will benefit.
For more information, contact: Traci Skalberg, executive director, Grand Island Education Foundation, (308) 385-5900,
tskalber@gips.org