Ten educators awarded Chamber of Commerce mini-grants
Ten Plainview ISD educators were recognized during the April meeting of the Plainview ISD Board of Trustees as recipients of mini-grants awarded through the Plainview Chamber of Commerce Education Committee.
The grants, in amounts up to $150 each, are provided by service organizations in the community. Teachers have the opportunity to apply for the grant funds to support or implement classroom activities and projects.
The following grant applications were selected for funding:
Teena Bennett, Estacado Middle School, received a grant from the Brandon Brownlee family. The grant funds will be used to purchase a set of 12 mousetraps racing car kits and five energy pull-back cars to engage students in hands-on lab activities centered on Newton’s law of motion. Students will learn about calculating speed, potential and kinetic energy, and using the inquiry method to create answers and develop solutions.
Juanetta Bocko, Plainview High School, received a grant from the Plainview Rotary Club. The grant will be used to purchase materials for a project in Art I that will provide an introduction to ceramics and glazes that are used in ceramics. The project will allow students to create a finished trivet and a tile mosaic artwork to be displayed at school.
Florinda Hayes, Hillcrest Elementary, received a grant from Brownlee Racing. She will use the funds to extend the classroom Fundations program with more advanced materials for developing reading skills during the second semester. The materials purchased will include self-checking magnetic language cards and boards, sentence and syllable frames, posters and reference charts.
Misti Juarez, Thunderbird Elementary, received a grant from the Soroptimist Club. She will utilize grant funding to purchase materials – task cards, graphic organizers, literature circle packets - for English / Language Art stations. Through the use of stations, she will be able to provide higher-level, engaging, effective, learning opportunities in reading and writing for her third-grade students.
Anne Kelley, Thunderbird Elementary, received a grant from the Lions Club. The funds will be used to purchase timers for lab activities so that students can perform scientific investigations with more accurate measurements. The Science Process TEKS require students to use a variety of measurement tools. With the purchase of timers, her 88 fifth grade students will have the opportunity to use timers in building a more in-depth knowledge of science content topics.
JaiVonda Kinner, Coronado Middle School, received a grant from Brandon and Diane Brownlee. The grant funds will be used to provide Flocabulary Online Activities and Quizzes for her eighth grade English / language arts classroom. The program, set to music, helps with encoding and retrieval of sequential verbal information. It will be implemented in the classroom during whole class lessons, re-teaching, and intervention.
Karen Latimer, Plainview High School, received a grant from the Lions Club. The grant funds will be used to purchase headphones for the Physics Department computers. Headphones will allow student to use the classroom computers privately for Google Classroom notes.
Minga Rodriguez, Highland Elementary, received a grant from the Kiwanis Club. She will use the funds to purchase non-fiction alphabet readers for her pre-kindergarten students. The expository books will be used in a small-group setting to incorporate science and social studies into literacy time and build background knowledge about the real world. The grant funds will allow each of her 40 students to have their own book.
Aimee Teeple, Estacado Middle School, received a grant from the Soroptimist Club. The funds will be used to purchase class packs of dry erase boards with dual-purpose sides for use in sixth grade math classes.. The boards will be used during formative assessments, class practice, review games and tutorials. One side of the board is blank and will be used to show work on class problems. The other side with an x-y grid will be used to evaluate algebraic representations of two–variable relationships.
Mary True, La Mesa Elementary, received a grant from the Plainview Rotary Club. She will utilize the grant funds to purchase “Hot Dots” materials to increase math skills in her third grade classroom. Students will be able to use the program to practice math in workstations independently. They will answer math problems and self-check their answers with a Hot Dot pen that lights up, allowing for immediate feedback and the opportunity to correct learning as needed.
