Fund-A-Need

RAISING STUDENTS IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY

Dr. Tyrone Howard will share with parents in a two-part series what it means to raise school-age children in an environment that is diverse.

Dr. Howard is a well-known speaker in the equity community.

RASPBERRY Pi ACCESSORIES

Raspberry Pi computer kit is used to teach coding to transition students who are interested in technology. 

I would also like an additional accessories kit to expand the number of programming tasks that students can do. If the district has monitors that we could use, I would instead like to request a second raspberry pi kit to set up two coding stations for the students.

Jacqueline Van Kammen

MICRO-BUSINESS - BLACKHAWK WORKSHOP

Blackhawk Workshop is a classroom micro business within the Transition program at Blackhawk Academy where students create items to 3D print and sell. Blackhawk workshop has a monthly sale where students, faculty, and families are able to purchase items that students have 3D printed. Students have previously 3D-printed key chains, cookie cutters, guitar holders, small magnetic pots with fake plants, Christmas ornaments, earrings, and more. The students learn all types of skills related to running a small business including accounting, sales, creating items using a CAD program, and more.

STUDENT MAGAZINES

Order 11 copies of both Scholastic Scope and Choices magazines. These are designed for middle/high school and offer a variety of resources focused on English language arts, social/emotional learning, and health. Students would receive both hard copies and access to digital resources. Scholastic Scope is Common Core aligned and offers multiple genres to help students become better readers, writers, and test takers. Choices focus on social/emotional learning standards. Both publications allow for a variety of differentiations by providing texts at multiple reading levels, as well as a wide selection of print and digital skill sheets, videos, activities, and assessments.

MATH EXPLORATIONS

Creating Math activity buckets for every Savvas Math Unit for every grade level. This will allow Teachers to easily grab what is needed for each math chat and support exploring numbers in a meaningful way.

KID LIPS SOUND WALL

Reading research proves that we learn to read by receiving direct, explicit instruction! NO GUESSING or IMPLYING! Readers cannot read what they cannot speak! I want to create a very-research based SOUND WALL in my classroom that will be used by students for YEARS! This is supported by the LETRS phonics training I'm receiving through our district. The board will be a visual that reminds students how their mouth should look when making a sound. This will benefit ALL students on their SPEECH to PRINT reading journey! The cards will be used year after year and displayed in my classroom.

EdPuzzle Funding

EdPuzzle is a teaching tool that allows us to embed questions and content notes into videos that we assign to students. These videos sometimes preview content. Other times they review content. In general, serve as a resource for students. We use these videos for assignments and our in-class lessons. They are also a resource for absent students.

Kathryn O'Connell and I have found these videos to be effective learning/teaching tool. One thing we most like about EdPuzzle is that the embedded questions keep students engaged. It also provides us with feedback on how well the students are understanding the topic.

We would love to have a yearly subscription to EdPuzzle.

Cathryn Krull & Kathryn O'Connell

8TH GRADE FORMAL

Funding for formal dance - decorations, food, and an 8th-grade gift for our 8th-grade students.

Musical Enrichment Field Trip

The choir students at Jefferson (both curricular and extracurricular ensembles) would be going to Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace, IL to see The King and I. At Jefferson, almost 90% of the choir has never seen a live play/musical before. This trip would be an awesome opportunity for students to study musical theatre up close and personal!

First Annual 5k/Fun Run

This is Jewel's first annual 5k/Fun Run. This 5k/Fun Run will work as a fundraiser for Student Council. The 5k/Fun Run will promote a sense of belonging in our school community - it is for Jewel Middle School families & staff and feeder elementary families as well. In addition, this 5k/Fun Run will encourage a healthy lifestyle. Each participant will get a shirt.

Literacy Creative Center

I would like to create a unique center with opportunities for reading and writing using hands-on tools and activities. The literacy center will include resources to support students in practicing reading sight words, building words, blending, alphabet sound/ recognition, writing, etc. For example, I would like to purchase flashlights or pointers that will allow students to follow along with each word in a book (left to right and one-to-one correspondence). This center will allow students to use their creativity, fine motor skills, and enjoy their time while practicing many literacy skills. The center will also challenge students to try new opportunities while engaging in interactive activities.

Math Racks

When it comes to math intervention we often name skill deficits as coming from needing "number sense." That term, however, covers a wide range of specific skills that can be targeted through proper assessments and subsequent purposeful strategy building. Assessments we currently use, created by Cristina Tondevold, refer to MathRacks as a valuable resource that can help learners develop an understanding of cardinality, equivalence, compensation, conservation, part-part-whole, commutativity, and associativity. Their purpose is to give students another way to think flexibly about numbers and become fluent with their facts through understanding instead of memorization.

AFTER-SCHOOL Sports – Pickleball

We will be hosting after-school sports twice a week for 4th and 5th graders this spring (March-May), including basketball and soccer. We want to add one more sport. We would like to introduce the sport of pickleball (and play it in the fall next year as well as this spring). We need 4 nets, 24 paddles, and 12 balls to play pickleball. We would teach the sport and have an intramural play. This is a great way to teach students about paddle sports and introduce them to a new sport, work on teamwork, and get exercise.

Spanish Books for Library

We need more books in Spanish for our library. Our population is 65% Latinx, and we need a lot more titles in Spanish. Currently, we have approximately 500 titles in Spanish (out of 7000 in our collection). We really need to bolster our collection to reach all of our readers.

Secret Stories Phonics Flashcards

The Secret Stories is a brain-based approach that can be added to our phonics curriculum and the scope and sequence that we have already implemented. It aligns with the strategies and science that we are learning in our LETRS training. The Secret Stories and illustrations provide logical explanations for letter sound behavior and are engaging and capture student interest. They provide the students with a key to unlock patterns when encoding and decoding. We have found success using the strategies so far, but need a few more materials. We would like the corresponding flashcards for each primary classroom.

Smith Superstar Peer Buddies

Smith created a peer buddy program under the leadership of Ericka Campbell to promote positive peer interactions between students in the self-contained special education and general education classrooms. Although the students are included in numerous general education activities, the staff wanted to promote more meaningful interactions between the students that included peer tutoring and social involvement. Every month, the self-contained students read the News-2-You newspaper and complete various activities related to the newspaper topic with their general education peers. Students have the opportunity to create a recipe or craft directly related to the theme being taught.

Crafts/Recipes- $400 (annually), Movie Field Trip Cost $500, $100 Peer Buddy T-Shirts

Senior Celebration

Requesting money to go towards the Class of 2022 senior end-of-the-year activities.

Photography Studio Lighting

Our classroom is in need of some additional professional-level studio strobe/flash lighting. This type of lighting is the kind that professionals use in studios and for photography work that needs more powerful and professional level lighting, and will teach students how working photographers use this type of equipment. This will increase their knowledge of both in-classroom and out-of-classroom experiences, including job preparation for those students who plan to pursue photography after graduation, as well as give some knowledge to those who plan to study photography in college. Any grant funding towards this equipment would be appreciated, even if it does not cover the full cost.

Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry Mural

My students designed a mural for the Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry, and we need to raise funds to get the paint and supplies to create it on-site. This would help the students continue with the project and teach them how art can help the community.

Red Jacket For Your Future

The SkillsUSA club is in need of the official red SkillsUSA blazers for students to wear when standing on the podium at the State and National conference. This helps with West High students’ professionalism at the conferences and builds their confidence.

(SkillsUSA is a new club to West- I started it five years ago from nothing, and have completed a multitude of fundraisers to help our competitors earn funds to pay their $75 required activities fee. These include the 5B's BBW at Homecoming, Breakfast with Santa, Halloween Trick-or-Treating, week-long summer cooking camps, and potentially an Easter Egg hunt this year. We have yet to earn enough funds to cover the cost of the jackets.)

Language Engagement in a "deskless" environment

Many world language classrooms have started leaning towards a more deskless classroom environment for increased engagement, which I plan to shift towards. In order to do this well, there are some materials that I will need to set my students up for success. In a more deskless classroom, students are not seated at a desk, but rather openly sitting in a chair and ready to interact with others. For this to be easy, the students would need access to something to quickly write on if need be. I am requesting 30 clipboards with dry erase surfaces, personal journals for each student to keep in the classroom for journal entries, and 10 children’s books in Spanish for our classroom library, etc.

CCRC Event Fund

At the College and Career Readiness Center, we organize events to expose the students to the 16 career clusters and other employment opportunities. During these events, we bring in guests from the community to speak about their experiences in their fields. Students can sign-up to attend during their lunch period. We wish to provide the students and the community guests with a catered lunch.

Punctuation Power!

During my 3 WYN meetings this year with my CC, principal, and assistant principal I have been working and discussing with them how to improve my 5th-grade students' writing. I teach in a sheltered classroom and my students lack the knowledge of many grammar skills and especially have difficulty with when and what to capitalize and when and where to put punctuation in their own writing. I think the following items will help me get a better head start with next year's students' writing; in addition to the strategies, I am already using this year.

¡Nuestra biblioteca!/Our Library!

We have one of the best Heritage programs in the area and I am looking into how we can make it better and stronger for our bilingual students; a classroom library! One of our goals is to prepare them for AP Literature and to fulfill this goal we (Heritage 2 team) have incorporated Literature Circles which are already showing progress in students’ interpretive, writing, and vocabulary skills in the target language (Spanish). However, a bigger selection could go further! I would love to incorporate Latino authors, it is so important for our students to be able to see themselves in the text they read. I believe it could help form a connection with the books and encourage more free reading.

Hall School Book Beasts

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

Spanish Free Choice Reading set

Though our Heritage Spanish students are bilingual, they have varying degrees of biliteracy. I would love to offer them a classroom library of high-interest novels at various reading levels that they could choose from for choice reading in class.

Making Books

We are celebrating story books at Schneider for a family night. We would like each student to have a blank storybook to write his/her own story.

Sensory Writing with Sand Trays

I would like to request sand trays to help my kindergarten students with letter tracing. Early Kindergarten students need daily experiences with hands-on manipulatives such as these to build their letter knowledge.

Culturally Responsive Literature for 2nd Grade

Our 2nd-grade team is working on engaging students in the joy of reading. We’d love to be able to add one culturally responsive reading basket in each 2nd-grade classroom.

Books-Novels, Paint/Painting supplies, SEL therapy fidgets

We like to have a new novel to read each year. Last year we read together as a class and it really developed their language.

The other item is painting. These students like to express themselves through art here at the Blackhawk. We have painted pumpkins and rocks. It is so therapeutic and relaxing for them. We had to borrow supplies from other schools as well as students bringing in paint. We would really like to have access to these supplies so we can use them whenever we need them.

$75 for arts, $50 for Fidgets (SEL) items, and $125 for Books

Shannone Hernandez

Increasing Attendance with AT-RISK Students

Students who attend Blackhawk are referred for a variety of reasons, including social/emotional concerns, credit deficiency, anxiety, etc., and for many, consistent attendance is challenging.

Our goal is to set attendance incentives for students at an individual level and at the classroom level. We know that good attendance leads to academic success and is a life skill we want to build within them to ensure their success now in school, and in their post-secondary lives

$500

Bonnie Osborne

Thanksgiving Feast

As a building, we hold a Thanksgiving feast. The students love it!! Many students do not have a traditional Thanksgiving in their homes. Holidays are often a source of stress in their family lives. We sit together as a whole building and enjoy a meal together. The students look forward to it every year. The staff sits with the students as well. It gives us all a chance to interact in an informal way. The food is prepared by staff and students. We are able to get a few store-bought items as well as donations. The Thanksgiving Feast gives a chance to a minute, slow down and enjoy each other's company. The students look forward to it every year.

$500

Bridget Flannigan

Bird Focus

Our school has an Environmental focus with the long-standing Environmental Club, Pollinator Garden (established in 2020) as well as Energy Aware with solar panels, Geothermal Heating, and mindful energy use. We would like to add a heated bird bath outside the STEM room (also located just outside the back of the building office area) where we hope to entice our feathered friends along with the bird feeders - but with it adding water sources with the purchase of a heated bird bath for the winter. We are currently finishing up adding an all-weather camera to capture the images and monitor to be placed in the STEM room so that we can view this added bird activity outside, in our class.

$150.00

Ann Butcher

Endangered Animal Adoption

Students have been learning about amazing animals and endangerment/extinction. As a class, we thought it would be beneficial to "adopt" an endangered animal from the world Wildlife foundation. When you "adopt" an animal you can get an image of the animal, facts about the animal, and the money goes toward helping protect the animal we have "adopted."

Celeste Bauer

SWAG Husky Promise T-Shirt

With the donated funds, we would like to purchase plain t-shirts and have them screen-printed with the husky paw on them. Inside the paw, we would have our Husky Promise components. Our promise states that Hall Huskies are a Compassionate, Mindful, Resilient, and Growing community of students, staff, and families. SWAG would sell these t-shirts and use the money to purchase swings for our school playground.

5th Grade Girls Club – 2023

5th Grade Girls Club is an after-school group where students meet to talk about friendships, transitioning to middle school, bullying, body image, social media, cliques, and puberty. The girls have a safe space to talk about subjects that they might not be comfortable talking about at home with their grownups.

West Aurora Middle School Band Festival

The 8th-grade bands from each middle school will prepare and perform three pieces for evaluation by a renowned band clinician. The clinician will then provide a clinic for each band to help improve their playing. This event is scheduled to take place on February 28, 2023, at Jefferson Middle School. The 8th-grade band from each school will have approximately 45 minutes to perform and receive a clinic. Parents are invited to attend to experience the performance and the clinic.

Touchscreen stylus for 6th grade

I would like all of my 6th-grade math students to have a touchscreen stylus to aid in their use of tools available through Schoology. I recently learned about a new option for an annotation assignment from Melissa Cikesh. This allows teachers to post a pdf assignment in Schoology and students can use their finger or a stylus to annotate right on the digital document. Using a stylus would allow for much more precise writing and drawing. I can imagine that this application could be useful for all content areas. As a math teacher, I could now post a digital assignment that students could easily show their thinking on without always having to have a paper copy. Thank you for your consideration.

Student of the Month

This project recognizes 25 students each month from September - April. During the course of the year, we will be able to recognize 200 students. Each month, teachers are able to nominate a student. Nominations can be based on academic, behavioral, or social-emotional growth. Students will attend a recognition party where they will receive a certificate and ice cream treat. Student nominations will be displayed in the main hallway display case, as well as posted to Schoology for both students and parents to view.

Magnetic Graphing Grids

For at least 2 quarters worth, Pre-Algebra students will be working with graphing. This could be in the unit of functions and slope or in geometry when working with the types of transformations. As a math department, we have started doing math tasks using large whiteboards. These math tasks are either; getting students to think about the process they might follow to solve a problem (pre-taught), allowing students to explore the topic together, or extending with challenge problems. Since math classes are doing more with small groups and whiteboards, when we get to these units, it will be difficult to graph. The magnetic graphing grids will allow for math tasks to continue through these units.

Student Council

The student council helps promote school community through this club and different events throughout the year.

$1000.00

Jewel Student
Council

Magnetic Coordinate Graphs

As a district, the Math department in middle school is using whiteboards to get kids up and doing vertical learning in random groups. As we get into our graphing units, I would like to get magnetic coordinate grids for our whiteboards.

Livres à lire

I am asking for a variety of readers to create a classroom library of accessible texts for middle school French. These will include both fiction and non-fiction works to help students gain proficiency in French while also increasing their cultural knowledge of the French-speaking world.

Jewel Band Logo Alpha Graphics

I'd like to display the jewel band logo in the band room on one of our walls using the alpha graphics company. The Jewel band logo was designed and developed by the graphic arts dept at West High and we would like to display it for all to see in the band room. The design is below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RSSv7-G9G-bPVHHRVy0i2A1ljpWVkcQd/view?usp=sharing

Nicholson MLS and Nicholson Parent Team Family
Fun Nights

Please help support Nicholson's MLS team (Math Literacy STEAM Team) and the Nicholson Parent Team to create a more comfortable, collaborative, and equitable environment for families and staff through the donation of additional funds! These funds will be used to purchase raffle and game prizes, BINGO materials, themed items, event decorations, and craft/art supplies for staff to use to prepare for the evening and for families to use during the evening.

CCRC Event Fund

At the College and Career Readiness Center, we organize events to expose the students to the 16 career clusters and other employment opportunities. During these events, we bring in guests from the community to speak about their experiences in their fields. Students can sign-up to attend during their lunch period. We wish to provide the students and the community guests with a catered lunch.

Meet a scientist! (Spring 2023)

There will be 3 guest speakers that will present their research and/or science career paths to West High’s Freshman 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 in science, present various science career pathways, and remove the social and racial bias of what a scientist “looks like''. Each guest speaker is passionate about reaching students with diverse backgrounds. We would like to offer them an honorarium for their visit.

Our guests include:
Dr. Jess Anand, a pharmaceutical researcher
Max London, a paleontologist
Joe Frumkin, a zoologist and animal behavior specialist

WAHS Wellness Center

Mental health resources (books & activities) for students and staff to use in our WAHS Wellness Center (opening Dec/Jan!

Document camera

The document camera I’ve used in my classroom broke. I use it daily for my various English classes. I tried to find a replacement, but we don’t carry them anymore at the school.

Fidgets

Many teens use fidgets to help them increase focus and decrease uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety and depression. Students with sensory needs use fidgets to help them with sensory processing. Given the increasing number of social/emotional struggles among students, more fidgets are needed. Houses are creating "calming corners" to help students feel comfortable in school. When students feel more comfortable in school, they are more likely to attend school rather than avoid it by staying home. Providing fidgets as a coping strategy is an easy way to help students social/emotional functioning in school.

TST Resources for Forensics and Honors Bio

The Trendy Science Teacher has some amazing resources for engaging, student-directed learning in Forensic Science. Forensic Science is in its 5th semester at West Aurora HS and although we have a nice sequence of topics, we are looking for more hands-on activities and labs. What's great about these resources is that they are digital and printable so that we can alter them for our own course's details, as well as having materials available for years to come.

WA Madrigal Singers Costumes

This is the end of a 2-year push to have all-new, custom-built costumes in time for our 35th Annual Madrigal Dinner this year. The costumes used previously had been in use for 20-30 years and were in disrepair. The new costumes will be a much-needed upgrade so the look of the ensemble can match the quality of its sound. We are using the same builder this year who built the first batch of costumes last year, which were excellent.

Operation Snowball - Fall retreat

Our new Operation Snowball team is hoping to take up to 15 students to a retreat facilitated by Downers Grove North High School, as an experience that they can use in planning WAHS's 1st Operation Snowball retreat in the spring. DGN's retreat is November 11-12, 2022, and will cost $85 per WAHS student.

Anxiety Packs

Project Summary: Mental Health Awareness Club’s initiative is to provide anxiety care packages that will offer different supports, coping strategies, and manipulatives that will help students struggling with anxiety. Our goal is to provide 100 care packages to social-emotional support staff to use at their discretion.

Leadership Style Demonstration Project

A classroom project to demonstrate the difference between autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership styles. Class is broken down into teams which must recreate an example Lego model using the three different leadership styles. Multiple sets of the same Lego bricks are needed to make sure that each team has what they need to rebuild the model exactly. I found a large bin of Legos for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $40.

Reading Buddies

Reading Buddies is a program that Jefferson Student Council participated in pre-COVID. This is an opportunity for our Student Council members to exhibit leadership and citizenship within our school community. Once a quarter, we'd like to have our Student Council members walk to McCleery and read books with students in the primary grade. In the past, we have read to first graders. When we travel to McCleery, we will purchase books for the event (usually scheduled around holidays and/or breaks). We will read the books with our McCleery "Buddies" and at the end of the session, we will leave the books with the "Buddies," so that they will have a book to take home and add to their home library.

5th Grade Book Tasting

We would like to do a book tasting with our 5th-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. Students will be able to pick out a book from the menu to read and keep. We have noticed students gravitate toward graphic novels and this experience could broaden exposure to different types of books and enhance literacy knowledge through engagement with a variety of genres.

Carrie Bailey, Tom Anderson, Catalina Campos-James

Raz-Kids and Reading A-Z

Reading A-Z and Razz kids software to be shared by the 6th through 8th Grade Wilson/reading intervention classrooms.

$256

English Language Arts and Math Notebooks

I would like to order 13 copies of Everything You Need to Ace English Language Arts in One Big Fat Notebook and 3 copies of Everything You Need to Ace Math in One Big Fat Notebook. These texts are designed for middle school and provide key concepts in a style that is easy to understand. They are also aligned with Common Core State Standards. We currently have 10 copies of the math notebook and it works very well as a way to introduce and practice important math concepts. If the prices change, or if I can find a better deal on a different website, I will focus on getting a class set of the ELA notebooks first, and then add more texts if it fits in the budget.

Goodwin Drama Club

The Goodwin Elementary Drama Club gives students in grades 3, 4, & 5 an opportunity to participate in supervised creative dramatic activities including a final production (5/4/22). Students will be exposed to different aspects of theater including impromptu skits, vocal music, dance, costume design, set design, props, and tech crew. The club will work on creative thinking skills, encourage teamwork, and provide students with enriched learning experiences in the area of performing arts.

$500

Jen Moe

WAHS Book Club 2022-23

Book Club began in 2011 thanks to the A+ foundation. As of the 2022-2023 school year, we have 15 student members. To help ensure the success of Book Club, we supply the students with our selected books. They are able to keep the books after we are done reading them. In order to make these books available, I have sought alternative sources from which to purchase books. I have utilized First Book to reduce the amount spent per book; quality titles have become available for $6 to $7 per copy. I have also used Amazon, as they have the most popular titles at the best prices. By the end of the year, we will have read 8 books. I am requesting enough money to fund 8 Book Club titles.

Adapted Physical Education

I am looking to purchase PE equipment for my adaptive class. This class has 29 students with a variety of disabilities. All of my activities require modifications to meet each student’s needs.

Building Thinking Classrooms

I have been reading Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. This book shares that studies have shown that getting students out of their desks, working in small groups, and using vertical whiteboards has almost eliminated stalling and faking behaviors and has a huge impact on the time students spend thinking and collaborating. As the math resident, I am asking for 3 sets of Wipebooks to allow our students to complete this vertical thinking. The amount requested will allow teachers to begin using this idea as soon as it has been modeled in their classrooms and allow for more dialogue and challenging thinking.