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GRANT
AWARDS
Round 38 - Spring, 2006 (Page 1 of 2)
PRIMARY/ELEMENTARY LEVEL AWARDS
Title: Central Elementary School
Level: Elementary
School: Central Elementary School, Brownsville Area School District
Contact: Lynne Reed, et al.
This project finds students creating a PowerPoint about their school and its student’s activities for their families and community. Each classroom will contribute to the project by creating an assigned portion of the presentation. The presentation will include an overview of the school’s facilities (office, library, cafeteria, etc.), classroom work, math-oriented instruction, reading/language arts instruction, and student activities. Students will learn about the options for developing a PowerPoint and learn how to transfer their ideas into the presentation. The completed project will be presented during National Education Week.
Title: I Can Show You Where in the World Flat Stanley Has Been!
Level: Elementary
School: California Elementary School, California Area School District
Contact: Elaine Shannon, Ron Reyer
This project enhances the current Flat Stanley program by adding a new component to it. In this project Flat Stanley’s adventures that are chronicled by individual students will be burned on a CD for the student’s work portfolio, to be posted on the School’s website and for a presentation for the school’s television broadcast.
Title: Making The Past Come Alive
Level: Elementary
School: Charleroi Elementary Center, Charleroi Area School District
Contact: Catherine Hayden, Steve Shields
This great idea will immerse third graders in a hands-on, history study format that invites students to explore, analyze, and interpret historical documents and to gain insights into events from the past. Role-playing, simulations, and critical thinking/writing will make the past come to life.
Title: Reading Rods Literacy
Level: Elementary
School: Charleroi Area Elementary School, Charleroi Area School District
Contact: Rebecca Broznick
This program will integrate Reading Rods learning manipulatives into the reading program to enhance reading fluency and confidence. Students will begin with learning consonants and sounds, oral rhymes, and identifying and blending phonemes. Students will then begin building words, working in word families, recognize spelling patterns. The goal is to give each child the tools to experience success in reading and building the foundation for their future school success.
Title: Implementing F.A.C.E. (Fitness is Alive at Charleroi Elementary)
Level: Elementary
School: Charleroi Area Elementary School, Charleroi Area School District
Contact: Dana Cannon, Dr. Brad Ferko, Robert Pepper, Marie Ripepi, Heather Smith, Monte Maugle
The F.A.C.E. program will enable students, parents and the community to work collaboratively to develop and maintain a healthier lifestyle. There are two phases to this program. First, students in grades K-5 will attend a two-hour physical fitness/nutrition session twice a week for six weeks. Second, parents/guardians will have a two-hour session once a week for hands-on activities that promote proper nutrition/exercise to develop and maintain healthy lifestyles. By introducing a healthy diet and exercise it will improve school performance, establish positive health habits, and prevent diseases in adulthood.
Title: Handy Homework Helpers
Level: Elementary
School: Green Valley Primary School, East Allegheny School District
Contact: Kim Sroka, Rose Schussler, Angela Turkowski, John Rubino
Handy Homework Helpers will provide for individualized take-home totes containing step-by step activities to help each student master the skill/concept that the individual child needs to work on. The totes will be circulated and changed as needed to ensure that the child gets the activities required to meet their needs. This will be a fun, hands-on way to engage the parents in their child’s learning and meet the learning needs of the individual child.
Title: Stuck On Reading
Level: Elementary
School: White Oak Elementary School, McKeesport Area School District
Contact: Susan Williamson
“Stuck On Reading” utilizes creative learning materials such as multi-sensory letters, words and sentence parts to reinforce fundamental reading skills for first graders. Lessons can be adapted to meet the individualized needs and interests. The goal of the program is to enhance the children’s comprehension of basic reading and writing giving them a strong foundation for future learning.
Title: Caterpillar Spring
Level: Elementary
School: Monongahela Elementary School, Ringgold School District
Contact: Kathleen D. Moranelli
This project finds kindergarten children leaning about the life cycle of a butterfly through a variety of language arts and science lessons.
Title: Lights, Camera, Action, Let's Learn!
Level: Elementary
School: Monongahela Elementary Center, Ringgold School District
Contact: Claudia Miller, Elizabeth Lewis, Laura Boyd, Diane Corbett, Steven Smart
Through this grant project, all first graders will have the opportunity to strengthen reading, speaking, listening, math and social studies skills by performing short plays and dramatic readings. The play scripts will be integrated into thematic units and content areas of instruction. Plays such as, “The Little Red Hen”, “Out in the Woods”, “Why the Bear has a Stumpy Tail”, “Big Mose” and “Elephants in the Wild” will correlate with curriculum lessons in reading, social studies, science and math.
Title: For the Love of Art
Level: Elementary
School: Monongahela Elementary Center, Ringgold School District
Contact: Mary Jo Brady
This grant project finds elementary students being introduced to fine art and artists through art reproductions and an art game. Students will begin their art history journey with prehistoric cave paintings and model that style of art. The journey will continue for all five years of the student’s elementary education.
Title: Orffin' Around
Level: Elementary
School: South Allegheny Elementary School, South Allegheny School District
Contact: John McLaughlin
This grant project enhances the evolving music program (based on the Orff Schulwerk approach to teaching music) at the elementary school. Through this grant, students will add Soprano Xykophone (wood sounds) to the musical ensemble programs.
Title: Going Places Systematically
Level: Elementary
School: South Allegheny Elementary School, South Allegheny School District
Contact: Debra J. Pliska, Brenda Godzin, Wendy Brazill, Julie Callahan Doughty, Christine Garbark, Michael Weiger, Jeff Polonoli, Bobbi Dansak, Glen Mannion, Jacqueline E. Moranelli, Carol Rothey, Marianne V. LaBarbara, Jennifer Lawton, Sally Podvasnik, Mary Long
This grant adds geocaching (an activity by which people punch coordinates into a GPS system to search for hidden treasures) to the woodland habitat study and nature hike that happens in the third grade. Working with the PTA, Asset Science and a community expert in geocaching, students will have a technology dimension added to the study. This activity will be introduced in the third grade but can be used in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades to enhance their curriculum.
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Title: Kennywood: The Pride of West Mifflin
Level: Elementary
School: Clara Barton Elementary School, West Mifflin Area School District
Contact: Donna Vranesevic
Using Kennywood Park as the focus of this grant project, students will be challenged in many areas of the curriculum with a focus on engineering and physics. Students will learn about Kennywood as a special resource in their backyard. They will engage in creative writing about Kennywood. They will learn about the architecture and physics behind many of the attractions. They will build either a roller coaster, swing, Ferris wheel or boom ride as an exercise in logic, problem solving, science and engineering. While participating in a variety of academic activities, students will also gain an appreciation of the history of their hometown and its famous amusement park.
Title: Listen Up!
Level: Elementary
School: H. W. Good Elementary School, Yough School District
Contact: Michelle Geissler
This grant intends to enhance the reading program by developing listening skills and phonemic awareness, and building an enjoyment of reading through a listening center. Students will focus on beginning sounds, vowel sounds, word building, sequencing, positional words, sight words, and descriptive words. Building an enjoyment for reading will be accomplished as the students are able to listen to books on tape and even to listen to a family or community member read a favorite story on audiotape.
MIDDLE/INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL AWARDS
Title: Exploring the First Frontier
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Belmar Middle School, Belle Vernon Area School District
Contact: Ross Farmer, Carol Frow, Christin Maatta
In this program, students will journey through the frontier of Daniel Boone and Christopher Gist as they write in their journals detailing their simulated experiences and research. Students will discover Native American culture, the clashes between the cultures, the role of women and children, and the importance of cooperation among the settlers in the community. Throughout the study, students will realize the amount of hard work, dedication and effort needed by the citizens to create a working, surviving community.
Title: Dance Your Way To A Healthy Life
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Bentworth Middle School, Bentworth School District
Contact: Mark Horan, Deni Laskey, Susan Smalara
Students at Bentworth Middle School will be dancing their way to a healthy life with this grant. Students using the video game, Dance, Dance Revolution, will begin moving, dancing and having fun as they improve their cardiovascular health. The workout mode allows students to track their progress by measuring calories burned, minutes played and distance traveled. This activity will be incorporated into health and phys-ed classes but will be used as a motivational/reward tool integrated into math, science, and family and consumer science classes.
Title: Let Us Sew
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Brownsville Middle School, Brownsville Area School District
Contact: Mary S. Seelye
Through this great idea, Let Us Sew, life skills students will learn the importance of daily appearance and grooming. One of the objectives will be to teach the students to sew on a missing button and repair a hem. They also will learn to use a sewing machine and make a small project with it.
Title: Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Brownsville Middle School, Brownsville Area School District
Contact: Martha Davis, Carl Garofalo, Nicole Harvey
This great idea uses reproductions of famous works of art to introduce students to the art, history, and the various artists. Students will choose their favorite piece of artwork and then research the life and times of the artist. Student presentations will expose each student to other artists and their work. Art appreciation will be cultivated while academic skills of analysis, research and writing are being honed.
Title: Take Me Out To The Ball Game
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Brownsville Middle School, Brownsville Area School District
Contact: Martha Davis, Charmagne Clark, Rhonda Liggett, Lori Rohrer, Diane Sheridan, Jacqueline Wadsworth, Kathy Werry
Tapping the enthusiastic interest of students in sports, this project will utilize sports literature to cultivate an interest in books and reading. The sports books will be linked to the existing Accelerated Reader Program. Students will also have activities, such as a “ mock” interview with a sports figure (living, deceased, or fictional) or a dinner party with four of the characters that they have met in their selected books that will link creative writing with their reading.
Title: Shoot The Hoops
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Brownsville Middle School, Brownsville Area School District
Contact: Mary Seelye
This program will find students moving around during the course of the day while practicing vocabulary and math skills. As students give correct responses to vocabulary (or any other subject material that requires practice, drill, and/or review), the student has the opportunity to “Shoot The Hoops” to score points and win the game. Other games such as Word Arcade, Monopoly and Scattegories will be utilized for the same purpose. The goal is to motivate students to learn and take the blahs out of practice drills.
Title: An Evening in Paris
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Pleasant Hills Middle School, West Jefferson Hills School District
Contact: Raffaelina DeSantis, Suzan Petersen, Michael Fratangelo, Jessica Lee, Kim Leopold, Lucy Fortino
This project proposes to transcend the classroom experience by involving the students in a hands-on cultural experience that would include Art, Music, Dance, Cuisine, Theater and Architecture of France. The middle school will be transformed into the City of Paris. Guests for the evening will tour the city’s monuments and buildings, view French artwork, see performances in the theater, and enjoy French cuisine at the café. Students will be involved in all aspects of the preparations and productions of the evening. This activity will be the culminating event for the interdisciplinary study based on French culture.
Title: Creating Memories in the Classroom
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Yough Middle School, Yough School District
Contact: Barbara Vrable, Michele Bernard
This grant utilizes scrapbooking in the classroom as a way for students to present what they have learned, conceptualizing the idea and organizing it in a way that others can understand while enhancing their own learning. This idea will be implemented in the Social Studies and Language classes and will allow students to demonstrate that they have moved beyond recalling information to analysis and evaluation of information.
Title: Book Club
Level: Middle/Intermediate
School: Yough Middle School, Yough School District
Contact: Erin Lyons, Melissa Kelly, Darci Henry
This grant initiates a book club for students to read, discuss and write reviews of the books they have helped to select. Students will participate in discussion of the literary merits and emotional reaction to each book selection. In turn, students will share their literature with their community by composing book reviews to be published monthly in the local newspaper. Books will also be reviewed on the schools’ televised morning announcements. The goal is to foster interest in reading, to expose students to the various perspectives of their peers in response to literature and to encourage school literacy across the curriculum.
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