Peoria Educational Enrichment
Foundation Grants Teachers' Wishes

PEORIA - March 2, 2010 - The Peoria Educational Enrichment Foundation (PEEF) hosted its annual grant awards reception in late January. Fourteen Peoria Unified School District educators received more than $25,000 to fund 13 grants enhancing the educational experience of students. The following grant recipients were honored:

EMBRACING OUR MUSICAL FUTURE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY – Nancy Kullos, Apache Elementary School – Nancy Kullos will incorporate the newest technology in all general music classes with her PEEF grant-funded purchase of a Smartboard and projector with stand. The $2489 grant called Embracing Our Musical Future Through Technology will make music come alive at Apache.

LEARNING TO BE IN TUNE – David Pietsch, Centennial High School — To equip students with necessary tools to prepare and perform music at the highest level, David Pietsch, wrote the grant called Learning to be in Tune for $1634. Quality and in-tune precision are vital to band students and the tuners will help performers produce quality sounds.

LITERARY LAPTOPS – Beki Slater, Coyote Hills Elementary – 35 fifth-graders in Beki Slater’s class will have a better opportunity to increase literacy through the Literacy Laptops program she wrote for $2,200. Her lessons will include creating and publishing, online research, development of functional text through Publisher and PowerPoint presentations.

FOR ALL TO HEAR: BUILDING A RECORDING STUDIO – Robert Vagi, Ira A. Murphy Elementary School – Robert Vagi requested $2,478 for his grant called For All to Hear: Building a Recording Studio. Students from kindergarten to eighth-grade will be able to record small ensembles from band, choir, recorder and guitar classes. In addition oral interviews, poetry reading and storytelling can also be recorded.

PUTTING PLACE VALUE IN ITS PLACE – Karen Klapp, Kachina Elementary School – Karen Klapp wrote the $520 PEEF grant, Putting Value in its Place, ensuring students will have hands-on manipulatives necessary to understand regrouping and borrowing while adding and subtracting. The materials will also help students identify place value, read whole numbers
and understand fractions.

COSTUME SHOP – Laura Vines, Liberty High School – Laura Vines wrote a $2,500 grant called Costume Shop. Her dream is to build the basic elements of a costume shop to create costumes for theater, choir and dance programs. Students will be able to perform simple life skills such as sewing a button on or hemming a garment, while they learn essentials to understand the job of a costume designer.

LOOK! LOOK! – Dan Prendergast, Oakwood Elementary School – Look! Look! is a $1,800 grant utilizing technology in the art room to more effectively deliver visual curricula and instructional content. Using a document camera and laptop link to a digital projector, students can see historical art pieces and watch hands-on demonstrations.

LEARNING JUST FOR ME THROUGH MATH AND LITERACY – Stacy Evans, Oasis Elementary School – All eight preschool classes will benefit from Learning Just for Me through Math and Literacy for $1,475. A variety of learning toys, manipulatives, games, books and puppets will assist the developmental students who have disabilities such as autism, behavioral disorders, speech and language delays and cognitive impairments.

LAPTOPS FOR USE IN GIFTED CLASS – Christina Zucchini-Fowler, Paseo Verde Elementary School – The $2,500Laptops for Use in Gifted Class grant will provide laptop computers to enhance curriculum differentiation for kindergarten through eighth-grade students. The computers will increase interest, allow for direct application and simulate real world projects. It will also shorten the learning curve for visual and kinesthetic students through pictures, illustrations and models.

VISUALIZING THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD – Jeff Sears and David Hill, Peoria High School –Imagine watching a close-up view of a chemical reaction taking place. How does a minute organism move? How do two particles interact when friction takes place? Jeff Sears and David Hill will now be able to show their students the answers to those questions by using Smartboards and Document Cameras to show reactions, microscopic views and phenomena in real time, thanks to their $2,250 grant called Visualizing the Scientific World.

21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGY FOR VISUAL ARTS – Paula Sallas, Peoria Transition Center – Paula Sallas, Peoria Transition Center Visual Arts teacher, believes that the arts directly contribute to the development of students’ intellectual and personal capacities. Her grant, 21st Century Technology for Visual Arts for $2,500, will provide a Smartboard, a projector and other necessary equipment to provide virtual tours of museums and architectural sites around the world and show art in nature.

DON’T LET THE MUSIC STOP – Eric Andreen, Sundance Elementary School – Students in fifth- through eighth-grade band and choir classes will now be able to practice at home or at school via SmartMusic, thanks to the $2,280 Don’t Let the Music Stop grant. The computer program provides performers instant feedback, demonstrating where their pitch is wrong or rhythm is slow, and showing them how to correct their errors.