CAROL MARTIN FUND
Grants from this fund are made possible by the extremely generous bequest from former Jeffers Elementary School teacher, Carol Martin. Carol Martin, a devoted kindergarten teacher, touched many young lives during her thirty-three years at Jeffers Elementary School until she retired in 1993. Ms. Martin passed away in 2009, but her devotion to elementary education continues. Her wish was for “the SLSF to use the funds to optimally benefit and contribute to the education of elementary age children in the Spring Lake Public School system.” Ms. Martin's endowed fund has grown through the years to over $525,000 and is held at the Grand Haven Area Community foundation. Grants from this fund are available for K-6 educators.
2016 Carol Martin Fund Grants
This year $25,233 were grant from the Carol Martin endowed fund. The submitted grant requests totaled nearly $75,000, so making these selections was a difficult and painstaking process for the Grant Committee. We are pleased to announce the following winners:
This year $25,233 were grant from the Carol Martin endowed fund. The submitted grant requests totaled nearly $75,000, so making these selections was a difficult and painstaking process for the Grant Committee. We are pleased to announce the following winners:
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Quaver's Beyond Marvelous General Music Curriculum
Rebecca Kaufman, Nancy Ireland This grant request is for the Quaver General Music Curriculum to be purchased and implemented in all 3 SLPS elementary buildings: Holmes, Jeffers and SLIS. Current music text books, teacher’s manuals, and curriculum are 20 years old. Pages are torn and content delivery is static - not engaging to the students we have today. Here is an example: When students learn music from China in our current music curriculum, they look at a picture of a Dragon Dancer in the book and sing a song. In the Quaver curriculum, students see a video of native people playing traditional Chinese instruments in China as they are learning the song. The people explain about their culture and students have more global understanding and awareness. This is a much richer learning experience. Every student in the elementary schools will be impacted by this grant. A Monumental Printing Project Abram Overway Holmes Elementary STEM and Art are teaming up once again to "blow the minds" of our young learners! This year we are going to incorporate a STEAM (STEM and Art) Unit that utilizes 3D Printing. That's right, our elementary students will be 3D Printing! This project will encompass standards in art, mathematics, and technology. Students will be asked to design an authentic monument that represents our Laker Community; each monument must incorporate a reflection pool (where students will review and compute the perimeter, area, and volume). These monuments will be build using LEGOs, recreated in Minecraft and Blokify, and printed using our new MakerBot Replicator + 3D printers. It is easy to imagine the engagement students will have in working through this project knowing they will be producing a piece of art unlike any other within our greater West Michigan area. Consider how inspiring this will be to students as they think about their future in the fields of math, science, technology and art! Dream It! Make It! Market It! Julie Kitchel This grant will fund a six week, engaging experience that exposes all fourth grade students at Jeffers Elementary to the many skills required to participate in a free market economy. The funding will cover the cost of public speaking lessons by the local business Speak by Design. Three one-hour sessions will teach students about Personal Style, Word Choice & Message Structure and Persuasion/Influence. These skills will allow students to create and present business proposals, product prototypes, cost analysis, and advertising plans to a panel of local business professionals. This project culminates with an open public market where student-generated products are sold. But the learning doesn't end there. The students go on to analyze their costs, their profits/losses, and pay taxes (which go to sustain the project). In support of our SLPS vision the students also have an opportunity to use some of their profits to contribute to a student-selected charity. Students may take this experience from the local to the global level by choosing to support a charity beyond our community. These experiences will help our Lakers to lead with excellence! |
Robotics! Coding! Programming! Oh MY!
Betsy Kipling Robotics, coding and programming are the careers of today and the future! The Jeffers STEM program has Ozobots for our K-1 students and Spheros for our 2nd graders. Currently, we only have 3 EV3 Robots for the entire 3rd and 4th grade classes. 3 robots are simply not enough to make Robotics part of the Jeffers STEM 3-4th grade curriculum. For the past 2 years, Jeffers has offered a Robotics Club as an after school program. Our 1st year we had 15 students join and last year we had 48 students! The Jeffers STEM program would like to add more EV3 robots and integrate robotics, coding and programming into the STEM curriculum while still offering a club after school for our students that want to go above and beyond. By doing this, we will be reinforcing skills from the common core math curriculum as well as science expectations at 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade. Our students will also be collaborating and communicating with each other, using critical thinking skills and creatively solving real world problems. Every Classroom A Rich and Literate Workshop Mary Cotterall The goal of this grant is to create literacy experts by having every elementary teacher at both Holmes and Jeffers attend Teacher's College at Columbia University in New York City, home of the internationally acclaimed Lucy Calkins' Reading and Writing Project. Teachers who attend Teacher's College Summer Institutes gain the strong background and philosophy that the teaching of reading requires. This grant will impact every elementary teacher and elementary student in the district and is funded through both the SLSF Fund and Carol Martin Fund. |
