Educators will use the money to teach students yoga in the classroom, to purchase different seating options for their students or to buy the materials they need to revamp a lesson.
The Clark-Pleasant Education Foundation recently awarded 20 grants to educators who teach in the school district. The foundation gave $15,709 to teachers who wanted to use the money to bolster student achievement, education foundation president Trisha Smith said.
“We are interested in creating unique opportunities for students to learn," she said. “It is different ways they are learning and being unique and creative about the learning process."
Every teacher who applied for the grant received one. Grant applications are reviewed by a committee of the education foundation.Â
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Doling out the money to teachers and giving scholarship money to graduating seniors represents the biggest missions of the foundation, Smith said.
Grant money came from a donation from Ray Skillman and other individual and business donors.
Here is a look at some of the projects that received grant money:
Learning with interactive games
Third grade students at Grassy Creek Elementary School will now have more fun when they are learning social studies, math and other skills.
Jamie Snead, a third grade teacher at the school, received nearly $1,000 to buy interactive games for students.
Games will be played during the focused intensive learning portion of the school day. Every day, students break off into groups to work on hands on lessons.
Before the grant, students would have to share just a few games and educators and students would have to find other ways to engage in intensive learning during that designated time period, Snead said.
Now, each group in third grade will be able to rotate games that cover nearly every aspect of essential learning, including math, social studies, phonics and science.
Education studies show that when students are having fund and communicating, more information is retained. The goal of the games is to allow that to happen during the intensive learning parts of the day, Snead said.
“(Students) do a good job of course, but when there is a game board and dice and tokens to move around it is so much more children friendly," she said.
Boogie to Better Writing
Grant money given to a pre-kindergarten teacher at Sawmill Wood Preschool will allow students to master handwriting better.
Shannon Dimock received nearly $800 to purchase 26 writing boards for pre-kindergarten classrooms in the school.
The Boogie Boards are writing tablets with LED lights and a stylus. Students can use the stylus to write on the tablet. The writings then erase when a button is pushed.
Learning how to write is a large part of the curriculum in pre-kindergarten. However, some students struggle with applying enough pressure to write with pencils and crayons correctly. This struggle affects about half of a class. Practicing writing on the tablet will allow students to pick up the skill more quickly, Dimrock said.
"It was something that is too expensive for me to buy out of my own pocket, but reasonable enough that I thought was something doable," she said.Â
The tablets will likely be used about three days a week for writing assignments and as incentives for students who do well in other parts of the classroom, she said.
“I think it will be an incentive for them to do their required work for the day, if they can use this as even a reward to make it fun," Dimrock said.
Scooters for the school
Students at Break-O-Day Elementary School will now be able to whiz around on scooter boards.
Using scooters will help students gain cardiovascular strength and team work in operating them. The need in her lessons is why Jane Jennings applied for and received just under $900 to buy the scooters.
Students sit and lay on the scooters and must use their arms and legs to propel them, which allows them to gain strength. Curriculum units utilizing the scooters have been popular for decades.
However, when the school brought in kindergarten and fifth graders, existing scooters the school had were too small for the older students to safely use. And a quality scooter can cost between $25 and $30, Jennings said.
All scooter units were scrapped because of safety. Jennings wanted a way to bring the popular unit back, she said.
"There is a variety of activities we can do with them," Jennings said.
