EARLY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

2017

Bailey Park and Fairview Elementary

Read! Talk! Sing! Write! Play!

  • Award: $1,000
  • Applicants: Sarah Seney, Jan Phifer and Andrea Zhorne
  • Students Impacted: 200+
  • Description: Grant approves the purchase of books and materials in support of a family event focused on increasing parent knowledge and participation in early childhood development.
2016

Bailey Park and Fairview Elementary

PebbleGo Databases

  • Award: $1,490
  • Applicants: Allison Pease and Lisa York
  • Students Impacted: 400
  • Description: Grant approves the purchase of 5 PebbleGo one-year subscriptions for Bailey Park Elementary and Fairview Elementary (10 total) to increase the nonfiction material available. Databases provide leveled text for young readers that will also be available for at-home use.
2015

Fairview Elementary

Sensory Room

  • Award: $500
  • Applicants: Ellen Grabe, Andrea Zhorne and Becky Shaffer
  • Students Impacted: 12-15 per year
  • Description: The Sensory Room provides students identified with Sensory Processing Disorder a safe space in which to get a break from the regular classroom while gaining skills to help self-regulate emotions and behaviors.
2014

Fairview Elementary

Grinnell-Newburg Preschool Creative Curriculum for Preschool Materials Enhancement

  • Award: $2,149
  • Applicants: Andrea Zhorne, Jan Phifer, Ellen Grabe
  • Students Impacted: 70
  • Description: Funds will be used to purchase supplementary Creative Curriculum materials that will assist teachers in offering individualized instruction in areas that include social-emotional, mathematics, technology and the arts.
2013

District-wide: Fairview, Bailey Park, and Davis

Leveled Book Room

  • Award: $4,000
  • Applicants: Chris Coffman
  • Students Impacted: All elementary students in the district
  • Description: Funds will help develop consistency in the district reading program by creating a leveled library of books for guided reading. Each elementary school will have a centralized location for book storage and a check-out system to keep track of inventory.
2012

Fairview Elementary

iPads for Transition Kindergarten

  • Award: $1,168
  • Applicants: Brenda Price
  • Students Impacted: 18 kindergarten students
  • Description: Funds will be used to purchase two iPads and $100 dollars for itunes gift cards to support digital learning and to increase and support reading instructional strategies and implementation of technology in the classroom. iPads will be used to enrich students who are ready to expand their learning, and at the same time, provide enormous support for those needing additional learning opportunities.

Bailey Park & Fairview Elementary

iPads in Kindergarten Classrooms

  • Award: $2,500
  • Applicants: Brenda Hagedorn, Donna Godar, Jodie Gallagher
  • Students Impacted: 115 elementary students
  • Description: Funds will be used to purchase five iPads for use in kindergarten classrooms at Bailey Park and Fairview.  iPads will help facilitate learning with math and reading applications that meet individual student needs. Students will also be engaged in digital literacy, creating projects that use higher order thinking skills.
2011

Bailey Park

iPads for Kindergarten Classrooms

  • Award: $3,000
  • Applicants: Brenda Mikel, Robin Elliott, and Cami Seals
  • Students Impacted: All Kindergarten Students
  • Description: Funds will be used to purchase six iPads for use in kindergarten classrooms at Bailey Park.  iPads will help facilitate learning with math, reading, and writing applications that meet individual student needs. Students will also be engaged in digital literacy, creating projects that use higher order thinking skills.

Smart Boards in the Music Classrooms

  • Award: $5,000

Fairview

Smart Boards for Elementary Classrooms

  • Award: $4,500
  • Applicant: Sarah Seney
  • Students Impacted: All Fairview Students
  • Description: Funds will be used to purchase three Smart Boards for Fairview Elementary classrooms.  Smart Boards will give teachers the ability to access interactive websites that center around literacy, math, and science. Incorporating technology into the classroom will engage more students and help them build the tools for success in the twenty-first century.
2010

Bailey Park and Fairview

iPads in the Classroom

  • Award: $3,000
  • Applicants: Lisa Coffman and Sherry Wallace
  • Students Impacted: All students who attend Bailey Park and Fairview
  • Description: Funds will be used to purchase eight iPads for use in elementary classrooms. This technology will support digital literacy learning and increase  reading instructional strategies and implementation of technology in the classroom. The iPad has numerous applications targeted for PreK-2nd learning objectives that can enhance reading, math, and writing abilities through a digital format.

Bailey Park

Smart Board Technology

  • Award: $1,500
  • Applicant: Sherry Wallace
  • Students Impacted: All students who attend Bailey Park school

Fairview

Books For Reading At Home

  • Award: $250
  • Applicants: Audrey Bierman, Diane Volkman, Amanda Losing, Cami Seals, Jennifer O’Halloran and Mindy Rozendall
  • Students Impacted: 50 Fairview students and 50 Bailey Park students
  • Description: Studies show that children who have their own books and can begin to build an at-home library will become more interested in reading. Funds will be used to purchase paperback books for students to take home. Giving students quality books to own is one step toward encouraging a passion for reading.

Smart Board Technology

  • Award: $1,500
  • Applicant: Sherry Wallace
  • Students Impacted: All students who attend Fairview school
2008

Fairview

English Language Development at Fairview School

  • Award: $1,100
  • Applicant: Nancy Beck
  • Students Impacted: Any students who attend Fairview school with a first language other than English
  • Description: Grant funding will provide language card readers and other materials for English language instruction for ELL (English Language Learning) students in grades K-2 at Fairview School. A similar grant was funded by GNEE for Bailey Park School in 2006. Nancy Beck has reported that the BP teachers have found the card readers to be very useful tools for their students. In funding this request we will provide Fairview teachers and ELL students with access to the same technology at the parallel classrooms at Bailey Park.

Technology Transforms Learning

  • Award: $37,500
  • Applicants: Technology Task Force, Pam Ewell
  • Students Impacted: All students and teachers in the district
  • Description: This request was made by the Technology Task Force on behalf of all of the teachers/buildings in the district. The funds will be used to purchase 6 laptop computers per building with the necessary hardware to run them as wireless machines. These laptops will allow teachers to receive training in order to help them gain the necessary skills and knowledge to incorporate more technology into the classroom. They will also be available for classroom and small group work by students.

Bailey Park

Technology Transforms Learning

  • Award: $37,500
  • Applicants: Technology Task Force, Pam Ewell
  • Students Impacted: All students and teachers in the district
  • Description: This request was made by the Technology Task Force on behalf of all of the teachers/buildings in the district. The funds will be used to purchase 6 laptop computers per building with the necessary hardware to run them as wireless machines. These laptops will allow teachers to receive training in order to help them gain the necessary skills and knowledge to incorporate more technology into the classroom. They will also be available for classroom and small group work by students.
2006

* = Contact Teacher

Fairview

Becoming Proficient in Math

  • Teachers: Donna Godar*, DeMeulenaere, Price
  • Students impacted: 66 Kindergarten students
  • Description: Materials for the DAP (Developmentally appropriate practices) program will be updated, and math games and math software will be added to the Kindergarten classrooms.
  • Expected outcome: The materials will help students gain success in areas of our math curriculum as listed on the Kindergarten Report Card: sorting by color, kind, shape & size; 1:1 correspondence; identifying more/less; making a small ordered series; counting. The new materials will also motivate the students.

Reading Skills

  • Teacher: Sara Schober*
  • Students impacted: K, 1, 2 grades, 15 students, reading and writing
  • Description: My project was reading skills and beginning reading skills. I purchased materials to enhance phoneme skills, rhyming, initial and final sounds, word patterns, building words, recognizing sight words, building sentences, associating letters and sounds.
  • Expected outcome: I expected my students to be more excited about learning and they have been. We repeat learning the same skill many times so I strive to prevent boredom. The ready-to-go learning centers and activities have been very successful. Since I assess my students once every six day cycle, I use graphs to chart their progress.

Parent Programs

  • Teacher: Sharon Terpstra*
  • Students impacted: K-2 Title One Reading and Math, approximately 40 students and the families of these students
  • Description: This project involved presenting programs to inform parents and encourage parent participation in their child’s education.
    1. Students demonstrated district/building Reading and Math goals. Teacher explained.
    2. Programs built student confidence.
    3. Programs attempt to build school/family relationships (partnerships).
  • Expected Outcomes: Parents will become more aware of the grade level and district goals expected of students; parents will learn ways they can help their child at home; parents will feel comfortable coming to school/visiting with their child’s teachers.
  • Assessment Method: Questionnaires at the end of each program and chart of number of homework pieces completed at home.

Math Skills

  • Teacher: Sara Schober*
  • Students impacted: 12 math students grades K – 2
  • Description: My project was to improve math skills. I purchased materials to enhance number identification, identifying shapes, learning and improving addition and subtraction, patterns, counting, sorting, graphing and measurement. My kindergarten through second grade students have benefited from these activities.
  • Expected outcome: The new innovative resources from my math grant have helped my students become more proficient in mathematics. It has made learning exciting and more fun. Since I assess my students once every six day cycle, I use graphs to show progress.

Reading Together

  • Teachers: Andrea Zhorne*, Jan Phifer
  • Students impacted: All preschool students attending the Grinnell-Newburg Preschool at Fairview Elementary have the opportunity, with their families to participate in this at home reading program.
  • Description: Since research shows that reading to a child is an important factor in having a positive impact on school performance, the reading kits give great ideas to “spice up” reading time together at home. The reading kits are from a series of high-quality picture books designed for specific age children. Every book contains its own set of support notes, suggesting useful and enjoyable ways to make the most of reading together. As families check out the reading kits they are asked to:
    • enjoy reading the book together, noting the information at the beginning and end of each story for ideas to read the book in a different way.
    • once they are finished with the book, families are asked to mark off their family name and return the book in the [plastic] baggie.
    • we ask that families keep the books no more than 1 week to ensure a rotation through the entire class.
  • Expected outcome: We expect that families find the reading kits help meet their needs. We expect that this program will positively impact children’s early literacy skills. With the completion of each book, children will have opportunities to build upon their existing comprehension skills, rhyming skills, and question answering. Each family will complete a survey with a rating scale to indicate how this program impacted their child’s early literacy skills.

Bailey Park

Early Literacy Development in Kindergarten

  • Teacher: Brenda Mikel*, Lisa Coffman, Robin Elliott
  • Students impacted: 65 Kindergarten students in the reading and language arts.
  • Description: We purchased reading materials to help our students learn the literacy skills needed to become successful readers. Some of the skills that the purchased materials address include alphabet identification, beginning/middle/ending sounds, common sight words, and phoneme segmentation.
  • Expected outcome: We expect each student to master our reading goals and score at the benchmark area on our DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) test that we give in January and April.

English Language Development

  • Teacher: Lisa Coffman*
  • Students impacted: 60+ Kindergarten students, both English Language Learners (ELL) and general education students
  • Description: I requested money to purchased reading materials to help our students, especially the English Language Learners, learn the literacy skills needed to become successful readers.
  • Expected outcome: My ELL students entered my classroom with very little English knowledge. When I assessed them they could not recognize any letters and sounds. Currently, they both know all the letters of the alphabet and can produce beginning sounds. Also, they can recognize the numbers 0-20. Kindergarten students are expected to know all these skills by the end of the year. It is quite evident they have made significant growth and are similar to their peers in these academic areas. The next area they are working on is learning the kindergarten sight words and reading easy reader books.