The grant was requested to obtain financial assistance from the FSAS for two international service-learning trips to Mexico and Ecuador organized by SHS. The need for support arose due to increased travel expenses, which were attributed to higher costs of building materials and inflation affecting both nonprofit trip organizers. The service-learning activities were highlighted for their educational benefits, including enhanced academic knowledge and engagement, connections to broader global issues and communities, and a deeper comprehension of the students’ roles in the world. These trips were designed to extend students’ learning experiences beyond the classroom and into international settings.
P.A.L.S. – “Peers Assisting Language & Speech”
The grant facilitated the P.A.L.S. (“Peers Assisting Language and Speech”) program, which provided additional iPads to peers in classrooms with students who have severe communication deficits and use AAC devices (iPads with picture-icon programs for communication). These iPads were utilized by peers during recess, playtimes, and partner-reading sessions to engage with the target student in conversation, identify sight words/core vocabulary, and practice interactive reading comprehension.
The initiative offered general education students the social-emotional benefit of forming friendships and interacting with students with disabilities and diverse needs. It also allowed target students to learn age-appropriate language, sentence structure, and social language skills from typically developing peers using the same AAC devices. The program aimed to promote inclusion and acceptance of students with disabilities and severe communication deficits. Both target students and their general education peers gained additional practice with Core Vocabulary/Dolch sight words, constructing grammatical sentences, and responding to WH questions during paired book-reading activities.
Saline Strength Functional Wellness Program
As Physical Educators, it’s our job to instill knowledge in our students that will last a lifetime. The knowledge they can take with them and use as they grow in their understanding of various fitness concepts and ideas. It’s important that our students have the confidence and ability to perform a variety of movements that they enjoy and can repeat. But also, that they acquire the desire to push their knowledge and abilities forward with a focused intent to pursue health and wellness for a lifetime. Our goals are bigger than just 1 trimester, our classroom goals are inherently learned over time so that our students may draw on their time in the Weight Room at Saline and share it with others. We truly believe this project is student-centered and delivers the necessary messages that are incredibly important in our classes every day at Saline High School.
We “OWL” meet together!
All students deserve the opportunity to interact, communicate, listen, and learn with and from their peers and their teacher. The OWL camera & speaker allows both hybrid and virtual students the ability to speak freely with everyone in the class without distraction such as a teacher repeating student responses into a speaker. The OWL has the capacity to show the teacher and my screen, the class as a whole, and follows the speaker to allow for a fully immersed learning experience.
Better Classroom Experiences for All
In a time of hybrid learning, our students at home and in school deserve the best classroom experience we can provide. With the Owl, our teachers can move around the room and provide the best experience for both. Also, students at home can more easily hear and see classmates, making many activities, Socratic seminars, and class discussions better for all.
Saline Live
Saline Live is a group of volunteers outside the school system that have the technical expertise and training to best assist with these types of decisions. Saline Live will work with the student’s family to identify the familial situation and the need. Saline Live will then assess the options available to that family to provide access as well as the resources available to help reduce the financial burden if needed. Saline Live volunteers will then work with the service providers (ISP), financial providers, and the family to install and turn on the access for that family. Once access is provided, Saline Live will continue its relationship with the family to provide technical assistance and support when challenges arise.
Orton-Gillingham Explicit Phonics Instruction and Remedial Reading Instruction
Orton-Gillingham is an explicit reading and phonics instructional approach that is structured for struggling readers. The approach is combined with multi-sensory teaching strategies paired with systematic, sequential lessons focused on phonics. These lessons are geared towards not only struggling readers but our students with disabilities and students with dyslexia as well. The Orton-Gillingham approach breaks down reading and spelling into smaller skills involving letters and sounds to then build these skills overtime while using sight, touch, hearing, and movement to build on these connections.
Visible Heart Health
We are requesting funds to purchase large television monitors and protective mounts to display critical education materials for our PE classes, as well as our students’ heart rates while they are exercising. This would coincide with our new Polar Heart Rate monitors that the students will be wearing during physical education classes. With these monitors, the teachers can display all of the information from each student and entire classes at the same time, similar to the current set up at all other school buildings (We are the only school without this technology set up). The district has put a lot of time and finances into these Polar Heart Rate monitors, and without a way to display the information, we cannot use them to their full capacity as an educational tool.
SHS Life Skills UDL Improvement
This project aims to increase engagement with and access to learning using UDL (Universal Design for Learning) and Alternative Access as aligned in the “technical integration” and 4C’s of the learner profile of Saline Area Schools and #SASCompass. An interactive Touch PC will allow students to gain greater learning experiences in a way that provides high levels of engagement, interaction, real world application, and differentiated communication opportunities within the life skills classroom. Access to this technology will increase student, peer, and staff exposure to project based learning, alternative access, and UDL across many subject areas and settings.
The Leader in Me–Year 3
This request is for year 3 of a 3-year rollover grant. Our grant request this year is in the amount of $12,565. (There is a slight adjustment in the grant this year, due to restructuring costs from Franklin Covey, The Leader in Me program.) The Leader in Me is Stephen Covey’s whole school transformation process. It teaches twenty-first century leadership and life skills to students and creates a culture of student empowerment based on the idea that every child can be a leader.
