District Fifteen Educational Foundation awards 15 mini-grants totaling nearly $33,000

Fifteen mini-grants totaling nearly $33,000 were awarded to Community Consolidated School District 15 teachers in May through the 2012 District Fifteen Educational Foundation Mini-Grant program.

Since 2004, the Foundation’s Mini-Grant program has awarded District 15 teachers with 130 mini-grants totaling more than $200,000. These small grants are intended to allow teachers to acquire resources for programs and projects that enhance and supplement the educational experience of District 15 students.

Mini-grants are awarded in two areas—implementation of programs and/or projects, and acquisition and application of technology.

This year, in conjunction with the Foundation’s ongoing “Fund a Cause” campaign seeking donations to help it purchase iPads for the District, 12 of the 15 mini-grants representing about $30,000 of the $33,000 awarded were selected within the technology category. In all, they will provide 61 new iPads that the grant recipients can use to engage their students and directly empower them to apply their knowledge in new and exciting ways.

In the technology category, this year’s mini-grant winners are:

• Terry Clark, Julia Leamanczyk, and Kelly Pfeiffer of Carl Sandburg Junior High for “SmartPen PAL: Pupils Acquiring Language Skills.” The grant will provide a number of Lightscribe Echo SmartPens that will allow students and teachers to record everything they write and hear and play it all back just by tapping their notebooks.
• Kimberly Haas of Winston Campus Elementary for “Improving Student Learning and Home Communication Using iPods.” This grant will provide a number of iPod touch devices that will help improve home/school communication with the families of her bilingual special needs third and fourth graders by allowing messages regarding their homework and projects to be recorded in Spanish and shared with their parents. The iPods will also allow her students to download and independently read stories in both English and Spanish.
• Michele Scott of Winston Campus Elementary for “Improving Home/School Communication Using iPods.” This grant will provide a number of iPod touch devices that will help improve home/school communication with the families of her bilingual special needs kindergartners and first graders by allowing messages regarding their homework and projects to be recorded in Spanish and shared with their parents.
• Karen Hanisch of Carl Sandburg Junior High for “The CEO is MIA: What Happens to Written Expression When Executive Functioning Skills Are Impacted By Disabilities Associated with Low-Incidence Handicapping Conditions.” This grant will create a writing lab in which special needs students who’ve struggled with writing can use iPads and various accessories that will increase their engagement and enhance their connectivity by providing them access to a multitude of resources that support their creative process.
• Amy Schmidt of Central Road School for “Project PlayAway.” This grant will provide PlayAway digital audio books that will allow her bilingual and at-risk fifth and sixth graders to independently read stories that they might not otherwise be able to read on their own in both English and Spanish.
• Sarah Das and Yvette Dunham of John G. Conyers Learning Academy for “A Dynamic Approach to Learning and Play Through Mobile Technology.” This grant will provide iPads and various accessories that will offer their special needs students an interactive way to explore academics, develop friendships, and practice social skills throughout their school day in their natural learning environment.
• Jason Christ of John G. Conyers Learning Academy for “Giving Students a 2nd Chance with Technology.” This grant will provide a number of iPads that will help differentiate instruction within a very diverse junior high class of students with varying academic abilities who have exhibited severe and pervasive behaviors in traditional classroom settings.
• Terry Clark of Carl Sandburg Junior High for “Mobilmediary (Mobile Media Library): Home of the Mobile ePub Club and the Mobile Animators’ Studio.” This grant will provide a number of iPads that will be available for checkout by selected students for specific projects such as ePub Club and Mobile Animators Studio projects.
• Lora Claunch of Gray M. Sanborn School for “MP3s and Literacy.” This grant will provide a number of recordable MP3 devices that will allow teachers to record stories for students—especially bilingual students—to listen to and replay as needed, helping them develop comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic, and fluency skills through repeated listenings.
• John Stoesser, Matt Hanson, and Katie Reynolds of Carl Sandburg Junior High for “iCitizen.” This grant will provide a number of iPads that they will use with their social studies and history students to spark their critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills—both written and verbal—while engaging them in some of the typical tasks of note taking and studying in the digital age.
• Erika Smith of Walter R. Sundling Junior High for “Supporting STEM with iPads in the Science Classroom: Making Connections to the Real World.” This grant will provide a number of iPads that will provide new and engaging ways for her science students to gather, interpret, and analyze data; create charts, graphs, and models; and apply their learning by making connections to the real world.
• Rob Lightfoot and Sue Baez of Plum Grove Junior High for “App, App, and Away: Empowering Students’ Learning Through Tiered Instruction with iPads.” This grant will provide a number of iPads that will infuse technology into the literacy environment, enable students to build necessary literacy skills, and support meaningful student engagement with standards-based content, all while providing a rich variety of multimedia tools to support students’ understanding and facilitate differentiation of instruction.

In the programs category, this year’s mini-grant winners are:

• Eric Brents of Thomas Jefferson School for “FIRST® LEGO® League Robotics Program.” This grant will allow for the expansion of the school’s LEGO team into a schoolwide LEGO robotics program for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders.
• Jennifer Muccianti and Dustin Sublett of Lincoln School for “Activity Integration Into All Classrooms.” This grant will provide Brain Gym and Brain Breaks resources that will allow classroom teachers to integrate more physical activity into their instruction.
• Stephanie Hernandez, Julia Haney, and Janet Stack of Kimball Hill School for “You Continue to Make the Difference—Part 2.” This grant is a sequel to their 2011 grant, “You Make the Difference.” It will continue that grant’s work to connect and empower the school’s bilingual families from the onset of their student’s school experience, and reinforce the message that parents play a vital part in their children’s educational success.

For more information, contact Donna Kennedy, Foundation coordinator, at 847-963-3160 or kennedyd@ccsd15.net.

-Story Submitted by Community Consolidated School District 15