Fund-A-Need

Student magazines

An order of Scholastic Scope and Choices magazines for middle/high school offering resources on English language arts, social/emotional learning and health.  Both allow for a variety of differentiations by providing texts at multiple reading levels, print and digital skill sheets, videos, activities and assessments.

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$235.71

Brian Furman 

top chair

Students at Blackhawk engage in friendly competitions in their classroom daily to see who can complete the most work. The "Top" students (those who complete the most activities) get listed on the board and get "special chair" privileges. We use the chairs in SUCCESS, Connections and evening school., so across our building, programs and extracurricular.

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$500–$1000

Bonnie Osborne

Scope Magazine for Direct Instruction

I would like to use Scope Magazine for direct instruction with my students. I would also like to add another magazine that focuses on SEL concepts. Every morning my class does a morning circle with a focus on social emotional growth.

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$214.28

Jessica Vandervennet

SCIENCE CENTER

I want to encourage my students to explore science! By providing high interest science materials they will develop a love for science.

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PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS RESOURCE

Teachers need more resources for phonological awareness lessons/activities. This book is used throughout the world or literacy and in our district.

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$250

Phoneme/Grapheme Posters

I would like to purchase a phoneme/grapheme poster for the classrooms that have my Tier III reading students. We use these posters in the reading room and it would be so helpful for them to have them to use in their classrooms.

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Water damaged books

A few weeks ago when the rains were coming down really hard, we lost 209 books to water damage and need to replace in our school library.

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$2950.23

Cracking the code-decodable readers

My 2nd grade students need decodable books that they can read and apply what they are learning during their phonics instruction: no more guessing at words or using pictures to guess at a word. With these decodable books, students will have authentic text that will provide them practice with applying words with learned phonics' rules. A decodable bin in the room will offer choice for students during self-selected reading time so that real reading is happening! These decodable books will help to build student confidence!! Decodable books often offer a child their very first whole book reading experience!! What a GIFT!!

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Sound wall

I would like to implement the sound wall/grapheme materials into my classroom next year to go along with From Phonics to Reading.

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Generifying the Library

In order to circulate more books in the library and to peak student interest in reading and finding books that match their interests, I am working on generifying my library. This means that I am putting like books together, rather than alphabetizing them by author last name. For example, I am putting together all the books with farm animal characters, all the dinosaur books, multicultural/diverse books, books about community, holiday books, etc.

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Adaptive art tools for art exploration

I'm requesting adaptive tools to use in the art room for students to experience exploring sculpture with Model Magic, creative painting with rollers and dot stampers and printmaking with Lego blocks.

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family literacy workshop

Liz Shaw and I would like to host quarterly family literacy workshops next year. We would like to provide books for our families and literacy materials.

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$800

Brenda Mendoza

Book beasts

Reading club that meets weekly to read and discuss various works of literature, to encourage a love of reading and lifelong learning.

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Spanish and graphic novel books for lmc

The LMC's in the district are making a push to add Spanish titles into our collections.. I would love to dedicate a few shelving bays to Spanish books since half of our population of students speak Spanish. Also, our students are obsessed with graphic novels and manga, and I would like to add to that collection as well. Graphic novels are the most circulated books in the LMC and students are rereading the same series over and over.

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Spring musical 2023

We are in need of funding to covers the costs to produce our spring musical. We encourage students of every grade level and range of talent and experience to get involved in our production. The final event is presenting the show 2 consecutive nights in March for family, staff and peers to be thoroughly entertained. The grant would cover the cost of the scripts, recorded music, supplies for set design, and any necessary costume pieces and props to bring the story to life on stage.

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Jefferson band tuners

I am requesting 14 tuners and pickups (and storage) to be used in all 6th-8th grade band classes at Jefferson. Tuners allow a musician to play in tune to a standard pitch frequency. The only way to do this accurately is with a tuner. However, tuners are an additional expense that our students cannot prioritize. Having a class set for students to use will give them opportunities for growth that would otherwise be unattainable. 6th grade beginners will use it as a check that their embouchure setup is correct. 7th graders will work in pairs to identify pitch tendencies of different notes on their specific instruments. 8th graders will use them for the more extreme ranges of their instruments.

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Hi interest/low readability books

There are many fiction books in the JMS Library that are at the Middle School Reading Level. There is a small section of books, that we would like to increase, that are at lower reading levels. Some of our ESL & Special Education students go to the library and, when they don’t seek out assistance, just grab a random book that they do not end up reading because it is too difficult. The books that would be purchased are based on suggestions by students in reading intervention classes, by students when in the library, and positively reviewed titles.

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Reading support resources

Resources to support students' reading comprehension during Targeted Reading Connections and intervention in Language Arts classrooms during station rotations.

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$140.65 (+ taxes & shipping)

Carolyn Wittersheim

heritage spanish cultural crafts & activities

As we read novels with our Heritage Spanish classes, there are a lot of cultural events and experiences that we learn about. We would love to provide our students the opportunity to interact creatively with the material they are reading. This grant money would afford all four middle schools the materials and ingredients to incorporate cultural projects into 7th and 8th grade classes based on the novels they are reading. The cultural crafts and experiences from a variety of Spanish-speaking countries enrich all students' multicultural curiosity and understanding.

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$500

Kate Becvar

Feed the need... the need to read!

We want to influence how our students feel about books. We want them to be enthusiastic and engaged in reading. We will do engaging read alouds and get real books into their hands and home library. We will read those books together through a daily read aloud. The students will get to keep the books to add to their home library.

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$500–$600

Lisa Bowles

mccleery pre-K gross motor day

We are trying to provide our at-risk Full-Day preschool students a new outdoor experience to strengthen their large muscle skills and coordination through active play. Individual children have differing needs and interests. Early childhood students require equipment that stimulates at least seven different gross motor skills, including pushing/pulling, swinging, jumping, hopping, catching/throwing, kicking, and running.

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$500

Kori Rentas, Jodi Essick, and Jyoti Malhi

the sewing lab at nicholson

Goals:
• Learn a valuable life skill
• Ignite creativity
• Create a sense of accomplishment and pride
• Enjoy the company of others while learning about yourself and each other
Students will learn basic sewing skills by learning how to sew on a sewing machine. Students will learn how to create a pillow using a sewing machine.

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$257.98

Joy Howard

book tasting

We would like to do a book tasting with our 3rd grade students. For this activity, students will have the opportunity to explore different types of books in a restaurant style format. Each table will be set up with a different genre and sampling of correlating books. We want to provide students with an opportunity to look at different genres of books. This experience will provide exposure to different types of books and enhance literacy knowledge through engagement with a variety of genres. Students will be able to choose a book to take home and read.

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$500

Holly Burg

Making Phonics Fun during K-2 Reading Intervention

The requested funds will be used to purchase a collection of children's books that will be used to supplement phonics interventions for our youngest students. Playful books help to hook students in the day’s phonics lesson. We can reinforce the learning and the transfer of letter-sounds by using popular children books to share with students after our phonics lesson. Whenever students notice the sound or letter they are learning, they can perform an action, such as clapping or echoing the sound. Research clearly shows that young children will stay more engaged when given an opportunity to interact with text in such a way.

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$453.95

Class Set of Hand Drums

These drums will be specifically be beneficial to the "science of sound" unit collaborating between music and stem. Having multiple size drums that have different sounds will give students multi-modal experiences to learn about the science of sound.
This set of hand drums includes 5 sizes that can be utilized in multiple grade levels throughout the year in music class. Obtaining 4 of the 5-drum sets would allow me to build close to a class set of hand drums.

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$479.80

Cheryl Hellyer

Stem friday

To add challenge, problem solving, and endurance to failure to our math classroom, we have started adding different STEM challenges to our classroom on Fridays. Most of the challenges we have done so far are constructing different things out of Legos.

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$240

Markers

We do stations in our 2-2 classrooms. Each student's table is a white board where we do math instruction. Using the white boards help support students learn the curriculum and helps.

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$231

Trials of Alice in Wonderland

Washington is preparing for their spring musical "The Trials of Alice in Wonderland." Because Washington does not have a performance space, Drama Club has to transform the multipurpose gym into a stage. To do this, we require funds to purchase materials that will help us give the students a performance space that they deserve.

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$981.23

Meghan Hill

Classroom Library 

In my Spanish classroom, I teach 2 levels of traditional Spanish and 2 levels of heritage Spanish. With the A+ grant, I would like to curate a classroom library for all levels of language learning. All the books I chose for this library come from teacher recommendations, professional development seminars, and student interest. With these books, I plan to include weekly reading activities and help the students develop strategies that will make them successful in the WL classroom and ELA.

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Stellar Xplorers

Space engineering competition run by the Air Force Association.

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$1000

Garden Expansion

We started a small garden last year and the students would like to expand it.

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$300

Linda Brennan

Meet a scientist! (Spring 2024)

This will be an annual event hosted in the Spring. We will have guest speakers that will present their research and/or science career paths to West High’s Freshman, and AP Biology classes. Each class period will have the opportunity to hear from at least 1 guest. Our goals are for our guest speakers to spark student curiosity, present various science career pathways, and to remove the social and racial bias of what a scientist “looks like ''.

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$719.84

Jennifer Aguilar

Business professionals of america competition funds

The West Aurora High School Business Professionals of America team has qualified to compete at the National Leadership Conference in Anaheim, CA. The Activities Department will fund competitions at the local and state levels, but not at the national level.

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Construction in geometry

Using balsa wood to create a shed (scale model) and also balsa wood to make quadrilateral.

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Output Sports Velocity based training license

In Athletic Physical Education, our plan is to use Velocity Based Training (VBT) through a company call Output. This program/direction will move out students (and potentially our athletes) into the next generation of training by focusing on movement, speed, and efficiency metrics instead of purely weight. If we can effectively manage this, we will be ahead of most area high schools in what we offer our students.

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mental wellness day

Wellness "fair" event in early May with activities available during lunch periods to promote student mental well-being.

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Pottery wheel in school field trip with ceramic specialist

When our ceramics and sculpture students first learn how to use the pottery wheel they benefit from a lot of individual coaching. To create an in-school field trip and bring in a ceramic specialist to kick off their instruction would help them tremendously. There are several local resources for this including Nuna Ceramics and Ceramic Supply Chicago that would be willing to send a ceramic specialist to work with our students in the building. Once students have mastered the basics of throwing a lot of the technique becomes muscle memory and investing a day of guided instruction with a ceramic specialist would give them a strong foundation for their future wheel work.

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Summer music lesson scholarship program

Most students in our band and choir programs do not practice over the summer because they do not take private lessons. A single 30-minute lesson costs $20-25, pricing many of our students out of this valuable opportunity. The funds granted in this request will be used to create a scholarship program to subsidize the cost of summer private lessons for 16 of our band and choir students in grades 6-12. If this program is as successful as we anticipate, we hope to expand it to more students next year through the financial support of various booster organizations.

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Parents empowering parents university

Merchandise and Supplies for our Parent presentations.

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Tomary Walls

Food Truck Immersion Experience

As a culminating activity for our Level 2 Spanish and French students, we host a Food Truck Immersion Experience each fall where students practice their language skills by ordering food in the target language. This also provides a cultural experience for our students who may be trying new cultural foods for the first time. That being said, not all students have the financial means to purchase food which limits their opportunities. We are seeking funding to make this experience more equitable.

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Cathy Wolek