Last year, we wrote and received about a $4500 grant from the Elementary Learning Foundation (ELF). The grant was titled the "Move and Learn" Project. Our goal is to provide students the opportunity for movement within their classrooms to improve student engagement and thus learning. We've been doing a lot of preparing over the summer and now that the school year is underway, we are beginning our process of implementation. Every homeroom has been ordered various items to build/develop a sensory/movement corner. Items include a ground cycle, medicine balls, balance boards, and therabands. All of the items arrived and have been in temporary storage in my office. During my opening day grade level presentations, I briefly touched on the idea with the students. On Wednesday, August 26th, Lynn Condon, our District Physical Therapist and truly an expert in the field, provided an overview and rationale to the Carpenter Staff for our idea. You'll see in the pictures that are linked below that Mr. Tom graciously volunteered to model the use of the ground cycle. Our next step will be to do grade level presentations to the students to help them become aware of their own attention and engagement and how to properly utilize the equipment we'll be bringing into the homerooms. There will also be training videos for reference as well. Continue to follow the blog as I update you on our progress throughout the year and update our photo album. We would like to expand the education to everyone so we will be including educational aspects for our parents in this blog and the Courier as well. To further the scope, in a couple of weeks, Mrs. Condon, Mrs. Pawlowski (Occupational Therapist), and myself will be meeting with the Park Ridge Park District to discuss programming. The Park District is also excited to partner with us for future activities at Carpenter. Furthermore, we are also looking to increase our ability to transform our classrooms to dynamic, moveable spaces to meet the needs of all of our students. With our approaching Track-a-Thon, the PTO and I have been collaborating about how funds from the Track-a-Thon can support our initiative. One idea, and one grant, can be a spark to transform and educate. Thank you ELF and thank you to all who have supported ELF in the past. ELF also has funded a 3D printer that we will be utilizing at Carpenter this year - a focus of a future blog.
For more information, click on the ELF website below. If you'd like to see the beginning of our photo album, feel free to click on the Move and Learn Photo Album below.