October 2016 Grant Recipients

It is often difficult to conceptualize certain historical events or to picture how landscapes impact government and policy without a map to easily reference. These maps would make a significant difference in my students' ability to grasp the space and distances we cover. While digital maps can readily be put on a screen, it greatly aids to have a large map in front of the class which students can touch, check their understanding, and measure distances. A hard copy allows us to get up close and see how geography was crafted by men through time.

Hands-on cooking activities help children develop pride and confidence in their skills and abilities. The act of following a recipe can encourage self-direction and independence, while also teaching children to follow directions and use thinking skills to problem solve. Cooking is a great opportunity for language and vocabulary development. We take advantage of opportunities for children to match pictures to words and articulate questions inspired by their new experiences. Chopping, squeezing, spreading, and mixing are all cooking skills that help develop a child’s small muscle control and eye-hand coordination.

Kuta is a program that enables teachers to quickly and easily create fully customizable practice problems, lessons, quizzes, and tests. Use of this program will allow each teacher to more effectively differentiate instruction in order to meet the needs of all students and their varied learning styles. This new capability to tailor instruction will have a significant impact on student learning by providing our math teachers the ability to tailor assessments to areas specific to each of their classes.

Shoshone Elementary School is implementing the Leader in Me program, based on Stephen Covey's book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". The program includes lessons to help teach students the 7 habits. Each lesson contains a book that is read to the students as part of the lesson. There are 33 books associated with the lessons. The school library currently has 12 of these titles available. The grant would be used to purchase the remaining titles necessary to teach the lessons.

The expected outcome is that these students would first feel a sense of pride in having their own Thumb Drive to keep their work safe and have access to it in any of the classroom environments which have PCs. The purchase these individual drives would reduce wasted time helping students find their files, PC's hard disks filling to the point of not functioning, and lift the restriction of students sitting in the exact same seats to match up with their PCs. Students would gain the flexibility to not only work on projects at any of the Rimrock PC locations but could also have access to their files at home.

The Garden Valley School has been met with some challenges as the library has re-opened to all students. The need for the school library being open was high, and the district has been able to commit funds to one full time paraprofessional to staff the library. The district does not have additional funds in the budget to purchase a cataloging system, scanner, labels, book covering materials or additional books for circulation. The GV School is requesting funds from Idaho CapEd to purchase a catalog module, mobile scanner, and book covering materials.

Special Education students at Council Elementary are currently using the Language! Reading Intervention Program. While the program is highly effective, the only edition available in this rural, impoverished school is over fifteen years old. The three student texts available have limited graphics, are of low interest, and do not help motivate already struggling students to read. The district does not have any funding available for a newer edition, so outside funding is essential for this project.

Mini white boards are used by students in various subjects to write down answers, problems, patterns etc. Students are able to take ownership of their learning while using white boards. They can easily solve problems as a whole group or a small group and allow me the teacher easily check for understanding. These whiteboards will make such a impact in my classroom by allowing all of my students to actively participate and be engaged during math and math workshop. These whiteboards will allow my students to remain focused during math as well as help save paper on my part.