By: Sara Steier, Kindergarten Teacher at Jefferson Elementary
The Dickinson Public Schools Foundation holds an Annual Teacher Grant Program every year in February. Board members surprised the lucky award recipients and granted $49,927.21 to DPS teachers for projects, materials, and programs that positively impact students enrolled in Dickinson Public Schools.
Our kindergarten team at Jefferson Elementary was awarded a grant for $10,000 to go toward the Differentiation Through Hands-On Tiered Interventions project. This grant will provide us the materials needed to supply interventions for all students at their very own learning level. This is the first year our kindergarten team has implemented these stations, and they have been a huge hit so far.
During this time, students work on various things such as numbers, adding, subtracting, graphing, letters, sight words, word work, and even fine motor. After completing our kindergarten conference this year and seeing an increased number of kids who need to be constantly busy with hands-on materials, we decided to tackle this project in pieces. We began purchasing supplies and quickly realized that things rapidly added up in cost.
This grant will allow us to purchase ALL the supplies we need to provide different tiered interventions for each subject taught. The project aligns greatly with our HRS certification as a district. We have a lot of work ahead of us to roll this project out to its entirety, but we are excited to work on this over the summer and begin introducing it first thing next fall. We look forward to continuing our work on this project and are anxious to see how it helps students in our classroom.
We are incredibly grateful to the Dickinson Public Schools Foundation for taking the time to listen to our plans and for trusting us to make this project a reality. We truly work in a wonderful district where support for teachers is evident. Feel free to stop in and check us out in action any time.