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Grants aid innovative school programs

SUPPORT — Three Harrison Hills City School District teachers received $600 Best Practice Grants from the Jefferson County Educational Service Center during the Thursday school board meeting. Pictured are, from left, JCESC Director of Special Education Amber Fomenko with educators Alisha Steele, Jaclyn Cottrell and Susan Macenczak. -- Contributed

CADIZ — Educators in the Harrison Hills City School District have gained funding to support innovative science and reading programs for their pupils.

JCESC Director of Special Education Amber Fomenko presented $600 Best Practice Grants to Jaclyn Cottrell, Susan Macenczak and Alisha Steele during the district’s regular session on Thursday. The funding will help the teachers procure resources to put their plans into action.

Cottrell, a teacher at Harrison Central Elementary, will enlighten more than 30 students in science, mathematics and life skills through her project, “Garden Growing.” The project uses indoor growing lights to show students how to start and grow plants from seeds. The plants will then be placed in an outdoor raised garden bed and pupils will use math and science as well as reading to discern what is needed for the plants to survive, as well as responsibility as part of their life skills segment.

“We work with children from multiple grades, which are currently kindergarten, first, second, fourth and fifth,” Cottrell said. “To start, we will have at least eight students who will benefit from the garden growing project. However, as it grows, I am hoping to involve more of the regular education classes.”

She said this was her first mini grant and she could not wait to share the experience of growing plants and food with the students.

Macenczak, a ninth-grade physical science teacher at Harrison Central High School, will show her 125 students how science works in the real world through “Physics Design Challenges.”

“My grant will enable me to complete hands-on projects that take students step by step through the process of recreating scientific experiments that played an essential role in physics. These design challenges will help students understand the basics of mechanics and electricity and will help give a real-life example to those students that think science is not needed in life,” she said. “Hands-on projects not only immerse the students in the process of physics, it provides insight into the history of the field — how the theories and discoveries apply to our world not only today, but also tomorrow. By immersing students in groundbreaking experiments that can be performed at school, it makes the learning fun and exciting.”

Students will rotate through 13 lab stations and complete projects while completing research and working through the scientific process. They will collect and analyze data and can get creative and competitive in a safe learning environment, plus they will be able to complete experiments and see the outcome quickly.

Macenczak has received similar mini grants before and the funds have provided many experiences for students in different science classes.

Steele’s project, “Learning While Loving Reading,” will hopes to promote an interest in literacy.

The intervention specialist said the project targets approximately 20 fifth-graders but could be reused annually and resources shared with other teachers.

“My project will incorporate picture books and novels into a small group setting to grab student interest when learning topics such as inferencing, making predictions, plot, character analysis and many other key concepts,” she said. “The grant will also provide board and card games to support student learning. Through this project, I will work to also increase reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. My hope is to instill a love of reading so that students will continue to want to read independently.”

Steele is a prior Best Practice Grant recipient and was grateful to share the resources with students.

JCESC Superintendent Chuck Kokiko applauded the teachers’ efforts and said the funds enabled them to make their ideas a reality.

“The JCESC has a mission of building capacity through innovative cost-effective programs. The Best Practice Grants are a great example of allowing our classroom teachers to be innovative in the practice of educating their students,” he commented.

“Every year, our district teachers continue to find unique and innovative methods for their classroom. We are grateful for the teachers’ hard work and happy to support their creativity.”

Harrison Hills has received 36 grants during the past decade Other school districts earned mini grants this year including Buckeye Local, Edison, Indian Creek, Southern Local, Steubenville, Toronto and the Utica Shale Academy.

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