SFPE Grants Booklet

SFPE GRANTS

2018 Spring, 2018 Fall, 2019 Spring Total Investment of $122,173 (ongoing)

SFPE 2018-19 Signature Grants Total Investment of $61,200 ASAP Creekside Elementary After School Assistance Program ASAP Mountain View/West After School Assistance Program GATE: Gifted and Talented Creekside After School Program Middle School Drama Teacher Mini Grants We The People Constitutional Government Art in the Schools Initiative Teacher of the Year Awards Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Songs Elementary Science Day Camp Science Olympiad, Middle and High School FISH Book Bags Reading Around the Town SHS Debate Boys Engineering Day Culture Fair SkillsUSA Leadership Conference

ASAP. After School Assistance Programs: ASAP provides tutoring for students in need of extra help. The ASAP program is designed to assist those students who are very close to being proficient, but have not yet achieved that level in reading and/or math. The program is designed to provide 1.5 hours per week of instruction (1 hour per week of planning) for 12 weeks.

ASAP. Early Elementary: This grant provides funds for approximately 15-18 students to receive direct reading support with up to 200 students impacted at Mountain View and West Elementary Schools. Direct explicit instruction by certified staff provides the opportunity for these students to become independent writers and readers which will then enable the teacher more time to work with other students in her classroom.

Gate After School - Gifted and Talented Education: This program offers accelerated academic opportunities for students in grades 3rd-5th at Creekside Elementary. This is an after-school program offered in three 8-week blocks. A new selection process takes place every trimester and students that have not been selected for the program previously are given priority.

Middle School Drama Club: This grant funds the drama program in the Spearfish Middle School. This program has been a highly 1. successful effort for this age group, has introduced theater acting,

and has created enthusiasm to continue in drama club once in high school. Fifty plus students are active in the club activity and production.

Teacher Mini Grants: Forty teacher mini grants are awarded twice a year at the Back to School Picnic and the Teacher/Staff Recognition Event at year’s end. These are $50.00 grants.

We the People. “We the People” is an accelerated government class for qualifying seniors at Spearfish High School. This in-depth study of the U.S. Constitution culminates in state and national competition. Spearfish High School once again represented South Dakota in Washington, D.C. for the national competition, as it has for seventeen of the last nineteen years. SFPE helped to fund the transportation for this national trip. Twenty-five senior students participate each year.

Art in the Schools Initiative. In cooperation with the Spearfish Arts Center and Matthews Opera House, SFPE sponsors and funds artistic and cultural opportunities in the Spearfish Schools. When appropriate, artists spend intimate classroom time, sharing their talent and life stories. The artists both perform and offer appropriate curriculum guides and discussions with their audience.

Teacher of the Year Awards. Teacher of the Year awards are presented to the teacher of the year nominee from each school, and to the Spearfish District Teacher of the Year.

Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song. This is an intergenerational music presentation that pairs community elders with fourth and fifth grade students and guest musicians to create a life story and original song. Individual elders spend time in the classroom telling their life stories for the students. A community concert is presented featuring the classes with their elder and the performance of their song. The SFPE also hosts a reception following the performance.

This project involves 125 Creekside Elementary students from five classes.

Elementary Summer Science Camp. For ten summers, SFPE has sponsored Elementary Science Camps for students in grades 2-3 and 4-5. These are one-week camps under the supervision of our high school chemistry instructor. Each class accommodates 15-20 students who experience hands on science…with plenty of explosions…controlled, of course.

Science Olympiad. Science Olympiad is an international program designed to enhance science education. Students from SMS and SHS compete in 24 events, individually and in teams of two or three.

The state competition is held in March at the University of South

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Dakota and usually involves about 30 science students. The grant helps pay for necessary materials, books and kits for preparation.

FISH Bag Maintenance. All K-2 students attending Mountain View and West Elementary Schools are provided with sturdy book bags for a very popular take-home reading program. Each student carries a reading-level-appropriate book home each night to read with their parents. SFPE provided the original funding for all the canvas bags with additional funding used for maintenance and replacement bags. This project impacts 600+ students.

Reading ‘Round the Town. This intergenerational program provides the opportunity for all first-grade classes from West Elementary School to visit assisted living facilities in Spearfish. During this visit, the students entertained the residents and spend some one-on-one time with individual residents reading and working on projects. This project impacts 150+ first grade students.

Engineering/Career Day for Boys. Spearfish Middle School seventh grade boys spend the day at the School of Mines in Rapid City for Engineers Day. They participate in many interactive activities and learn about the varied careers related to technology, engineering, science and math. This project impacts about 75 students.

SHS Speech & Debate Team. Funds are requested to support travel, fees, and competition costs. Four to six students will directly benefit as representatives of the High School Speech and Debate Program at national competition. The remainder of the team and student body will benefit by association. It is the largest academic competition in the nation.

Culture Fair. This is a culminating social studies project for all of seventh grade students at Spearfish Middle School. Students become experts on a country in the Western Hemisphere and create a presentation poster, prepare food from their chosen country and culturally dress for the occasion. Two hundred students are impacted.

Skills USA National Leadership Conference. SkillsUSA is an applied method of instruction for preparing America’s high-performance workers standards, superior work skills, life-long education, and pride in the dignity of work. This conference provides an opportunity for the high school welding and drafting students to demonstrate their job skills learned throughout the year in their CTE classes. This real-world challenge forces students to be creative and be at the top of their game, not only as manufacturers of a product, but also as the inventors of that product.

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SFPE 2018-19 FISH Grants Total Investment of $59,173

Genius Hour Newsela The Big Read Game Club Keva Planks Thermal Imaging Middle School Automation Robotics Imagine Learning Facts Tynker Coding Junior Achievement EMWave 2 Quick Coherence Flexible Furniture Butterfly Day Science Day Camp Lasting Memories National Geographic Bee Finding Nemo: Strength through Swimming SD Structure Workshop/Spherical Art

Harvard Case Study History Project Mosaic Pictures SHS Band Soundtrack A Night of One Acts My Cookies Chirp (MC2) Underground Environmental Monitoring A Scenic Musical Breakout Boxes When Clay Sings Books Alive!

Project iPad Future Ready Libraries TeamMates Mentoring A Day in the Life of a Soldier SHS Spartan Robotics Full STEAM Ahead Girls on the Run Bathroom Beauty Garden Beds

Genius Hour. Genius Hour offers a 60-minute session once per week for students to dive in and explore a topic of their choice.

Upon completion there will be a Genius Hour Showcase in the Creekside Elementary Commons area. Funding allows students to gather sufficient materials and supplies needed to make their Genius Hour project successful.

Newsela: Newsela is an online news-as-literacy platform that features current, high-interest articles on current events in everything from literature to science. Each student has access to Newsela on their school laptop and can analyze and respond to world events.

This allows teachers to use the reading and writing features of the program in an unlimited capacity. Newsela has the capability to be incorporated into Google Classroom, which is the learning platform used by 8th grade ELA teachers.

The Big Read. The goal is for students to learn how to read for pleasure rather than a reading assignment. Books are purchased and given as gifts to our students. Students have the opportunity to engage in an expanded experience beyond independent reading through classroom work, book clubs, library involvement and an author visit. The title of the book is coordinated with the Spearfish Big Read, so not only is this experience school-wide, but also community-wide with 700+ students.

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Game Club. SHS Game Club is a weekly student group that meets for card, strategy, board and role-playing games. This grant supplies the Game Club with their own school sponsored materials, rather than depending upon borrowed materials; these games will remain SHS property and provides a sense of legitimacy to the Game Club members.

Keva Planks. This grant is for KEVA Planks for the Middle School library. These are available to students and staff throughout the school day. KEVA planks are durable maple planks that help spark interest in building and design. They also help students learn STEM basics such as balance and proportion.

Thermal Imaging. The thermal camera allows students to capture images on convection currents, radiation, and conduction. By allowing the students to use the thermal camera to capture the world around them we will be helping them connect the concepts in the classroom to their everyday lives. There will be over 200, 6th grade students impacted along with 120-150, 8th grade students.

Middle School Automation and Robotics. Automation and Robotics is currently offered as a course at the Middle School. Due to the increase in interest of students enrolling in the course, combined with increasing enrollment, we would like to offer additional sections of Automation and Robotics. VEX Robotics kits for student use in the course have already been purchased through a curriculum buy cycle. The course will continue to be offered at the Middle School for as long as it is supported by Project Lead the Way. Imagine Learning Facts. Imagine Learning Facts, previously known as Timez Attack, is a proven educational computer program that mimics many modern-day video gaming experiences; therefore, it engages students at the same level as those games, yet still provides educational value for all learners in the 3rd grade, approximately 200 students.

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Tynker Coding. In the US we do not have enough graduates in computing, STEM or Computer Science to fill this demand. The goal of this project is to increase the exposure our students have to coding. Students will have the opportunity to integrate computer science and coding into their core content classes AND have another way to show their learning through the power of coding. Tynker is an easy to use platform that ANY teacher can integrate into their classes, with or without a background in Computer Science. The Tynker platform teaches coding and is used to program our drones and robots. Tynker is currently developing lessons for augmented and virtual reality; they will be one of the first platforms of computer science curriculum to have these lessons developed for students.

Junior Achievement. To Prepare and Inspire Young People to Succeed in a Global Economy. JA is the world’s largest organization dedicated to economic education for young people in the United States and over 122 countries. Over 2,000 South Dakota classroom volunteers support JA annually. In South Dakota, funding is secured through businesses, individuals, foundations, and special events. Junior Achievement of South Dakota does not receive financial support from United Way or government agencies.

EmWave2 Quick Coherence Intervention. Students at the SMS have an opportunity to become more self-aware of how their body reacts to stress through the EMWave2 Quick Coherence equipment which measures heart rate activity using a simple finger clip that connects to a computer monitor. Two EmWave2 device is used with students by the counselors in their offices at the Middle School.

Three EmWave2 devices are available for independent use by students. Up to 30 students that frequent the school counselors’ services are impacted by the project. Additional students will be impacted moving forward as this project will be ongoing year-afteryear if deemed successful via the outcome measures.

Flexible Furniture. This grant is used to purchase materials to provide students with flexible seating opportunities. The goal is to create a classroom space that is welcoming and safe to students. In her STEM and computer Science courses students do work that is independent, partnered, or in groups. Students need to be able to move around in a variety of ways.

Butterfly Day. This class project promotes a rich opportunity to examine how our lives are transformed, and the beauty and uniqueness of us all, with the overall message that a child is like a butterfly.

The children listen to a guest speaker and learn a song about being different. Students break into small groups and travel to various areas in the school to see what is like to have various abilities and disabilities. This takes place at Mountain View Elementary for 150+ Kindergarten students.

Science Day Camp. Science Day Camp offers students a field opportunity to learn about lessons studied in life science during the school year in a natural setting. Presenters are science professionals in the life science areas.

Lasting Memories. The high school journalism class is tasked with the job to capture the school year through photos and create the yearbook. Pictures are an essential part of this project and high-quality cameras are a necessity. Cameras and accessories purchased will be used this year and in years to come to tell the story of their school year, while affording students the opportunity to learn photo journalism and photography skills.

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National Geographic Bee. This is for students grades 4-8 (30 students) to compete in the local, newly created GeoBee with hopes to qualify for State and Nationals. Part of the group includes mentors from the high school, 10-15 students. This program is to inspire students in the knowledge of World Geography through the fun of competition.

Finding Nemo - Strength through Swimming. In collaboration with BHSU and the Young Center Pool, 20 alternative physical education students have an opportunity twice a month to utilize the facilities. This program introduces swimming as a lifetime fitness activity for individuals with varying physical abilities, a mental exercise to help promote mental health and well-being and allow their bodies to be less effected by the force of gravity, which allows them to move without pain or be uncomfortable in space. This program funds equipment used in the pool.

3D Structure Workshop/Spherical Art from Geometry. Students in the 6th and 8th grade participate in workshops with Mr. Dick Termes at the Middle School. With varying days Mr. Termes works doing 3D Workshops then switches to Spherical Art from Geometry.

Through the 3D Structure Workshop Mr. Termes explains his work and how it pertains to math as well as art and how the two can go hand-in-hand. Students create their own miniature Termesphere.

Harvard Case Study History Project. Harvard Business School is conducting a nation-wide project on case studies in American History. Spearfish High School has been offered a chance to participate in this project. The chosen school will present a selected number of case studies involved in American History to measure the effectiveness of this curriculum. Students impacted would be 11th and 12th grades.

Mosaic Pictures. Through a creative medium of art, students at the Middle School in Mrs. Farley’s flex time create mosaic pictures on plywood using natural items such as beans, rice and corn during a Flex class.

SHS Band Soundtrack. Members of the HS Band (30-40 students 10th-12th grade) traveled to Los Angeles, CA from June 10-16, 2019. The band had the opportunity to participate in the Disney Soundtrack Session and work with professional clinicians and recording artists. During the Soundtrack Session the band tested their sight reading and ensemble abilities by reading, rehearsing, and recording music from Disney films. This workshop provided a new opportunity for the students to learn what it’s like to work in the music industry as a professional.

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A Night of One Acts. This creates the opportunities for high school students to direct plays at SHS and, thus, increase the number of students (30+) who can participate on and off stage in our one act show. One of the student productions will be chosen to attend the State One Act Play Festival. The grant funds the cost of supplies and scripts.

My Cookies Chirp (MC2). As the human population of our planet continues to grow and quantity and quality of our sustain resources continue to diminish, new ways of doing things must be tried and developed to sustain life on the planet. The students believe that including insects in our diet as a source of protein and nutrition may be a positive action. Students at the Canyon Hills Academy grades 7-12 made cookies with insect-based goodies and introduced it to at least 100 people. This program funded the supplies to make the cookies and T-shirts as rewards for outstanding efforts.

Underground Environmental Monitoring. This project takes place at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The monitoring project now consists of six networked flow meters that are remote controlled from Mr. Gabriel’s classroom and controlled by a couple of highly involved high school students. The flow meter network is being utilized by scientists and engineers at the lab to help design the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) for the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE). The flow meter network data has been analyzed by freshman in physical science and senior’s in physics for the past eight years.

A Scenic Musical. Music Theatre International, the company who owns the rights of this year’s musical and with whom we contract out script and music rentals, now offers animated and still Broadway-quality scenic projections. These are used to enhance the background of performances. This will employ an animated scenic backdrop for this year’s high school’s spring musical. The scenic animations are projected during the course of the production. It cuts down on the time needed for building the backdrop and allows the crew to focus on smaller statement pieces rather than filling the stage with a backdrop.

Breakout Boxes. BreakoutEDU boxes are used to facilitate inquiry, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication. They promote interaction and social learning in the classroom by utilizing the provided platforms in areas of math, science, social studies, ELA, world languages and more. There are physical games, digital games and game builders which offers Spearfish Middle School 6th grade students and teachers access to build their own content-aligned games for classroom sharing.

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When Clay Sings. This project incorporates creating a clay pot and writing a story using the voice of the pot as a FLEX class at the Middle School and funds supplies for the class including clay, paints and brushes.

Books Alive!. Kindergarteners at Mountain View will receive one book through this grant as well as meet storybook/non-fiction characters who “come alive� from the books they receive to create excitement about reading. Supplies include the books and costumes.

Project iPad. Approximately, 60-75, 3rd-5th grade students have access to the iPads to build skills accommodate their areas of disabilities at Creekside Elementary. Apps specialize in skill building, memory, basic reading, reading fluency and comprehension and others. This grant is for ten iPads and headphones.

Future Ready Libraries. Libraries are places where students not only read, study, and collaborate, but create and innovate as well. They are becoming a learning commons area available for all students. Makerspace within libraries are spaces where students have access to supplies and materials that are meant to spark their creativity, allow them to innovate, and help them experience the benefits of trying and learning something new. This grant is for a 3D printer and the film cartridges at Spearfish High School.

TeamMates Mentoring. The mission of TeamMates Mentoring is to positively impact the world by inspiring youth to reach their full potential through mentoring. It was established in 1991 and has been actively successful in NE, IA, WY and KS in providing more than 8,400 youth with support and encouragement. The idea is to team up community members with students who need extra support or encouragement at Spearfish High School. This is an in-school, on-campus mentoring.

A Day in the Life of a Soldier. This is a day-long event at Ft. Meade in Sturgis sponsored by the SD National Guard. All 600+ Middle School students are divided into teams with the Guard soldiers and teachers to experience learning about what the training and life is like as an Army soldier. Funds are to help over the busing of the students to Sturgis.

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Spartan Robotics. Spartan Robotics was established in 2017 and meets two to three times a week or more leading up to competitions. They have competed at the regional tournament in Rapid City this past December, the state robotics tournament in February, and the US Open competition in April which resulted in many awards.

This funding is for team registrations, competition kit, robot parts and supplies, T-Shirts and tools.

Full STEAM Ahead. STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) learning is an exciting opportunity for students to explore science of the future and help expand and enrich the content and skills being learned in the classroom. By incorporating Edison Robots, Makey Makey Stem Kits, and Think Boards, the 3rd grade students at Creekside Elementary will have more STEAM options to choose from while working on small group and independent choice activities.

Girls on the Run/Let Me Run. The mission of the girls’ program is to inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running. The mission of the boys’ program is to inspire boys through the power of running, to be courageous enough to be themselves, to build healthy relationships, and to live an active lifestyle. This is noncompetitive running and training to achieve a goal of participation in a 5K run event in addition to teaching life lessons that encourage positive emotional, physical, social and mental development. Funding is used to off-set any registration fees to participate. This project involves 40, 3rd-5th grade students at Creekside Elementary.

Bathroom Beauty. This is a SMS student council project idea to decorate the bathrooms with artful pictures and sayings. Understanding that the bathroom is sometimes a place a student seeks quiet solitude from the hectic pace of middle school they thought this would be a great place to cheer it up with art. All students from the art classes have been actively designing ideas for the bathrooms. The funding for this project is for paint, rollers, and brushes.

Garden Beds. Mountain View Elementary plans to build three raised garden beds for students to participate in gardening activities as part of their science instruction. Kindergarten students will prepare ground, plant, weed and harvest throughout the seasons.

This project not only teacher about the life cycle, but also real-life application of learning – nutritional information, weather components and sensory activities.

To donate to the Spearfish Foundation for Public Education or for more information please visit: www.spearfishschools.org 10.

Spearfish Foundation for Public Education P.O. Box 1351 • Spearfish, SD 57783 605-717-1201 www.spearfishschools.org • info@spearfishschools.org