The objectives of this grant are to support students who need a different option during PE and recess time due to social and emotional concerns as well as for all students during poor weather days, which happen often on the summit. The second reason is to better support our special education and intervention students. Roughly 19% of our student population is in intervention. Most of those students deal with issues of self management and social emotional needs. Mrs. Williamson and I have tracked about five of those students over the last two years and have been highly aware of the relationship between their social/emotional needs in regards to academic performance. We have found that they all highly benefited from kinesthetic opportunities either prior to or after their intervention block. That said, we have also built in those breaks throughout the day for many students while in the regular classroom setting. As of right now, many of our options deal with playing with a ball. We would like to expand these options for movement and play into the realm of strategic thinking, balance and focus, and engineering. This is why we have decided to try to purchase Magna-tiles, Spooner Boards, and Keva Planks. All students would have access but they will be heavily utilized for specific students based on their individual needs. The sensory paths have been studied by occupational and behavioral therapists and have shown decreases in behaviors and increases in cognition. Again, through movement they help focus the students provide a calm structure to our hallways and mutli-purpose room
The benefit would be to all students, as explained above, but students in the intervention program, students with social and emotional needs, and those in special education would have more regular and structured access to these tools. The benefit is also school wide in decreasing hallway behaviors. Our students move to "where their brains work" and often are traveling to one classroom or another for math, reading, or science. Providing the sensory paths would ease these transitions and provide deeper and more meaningful protocols to the movement process.
As stated, we have watched and have spent much time as a team analyzing and applying tools before or after intervention that allow movement, puzzle and problem solving, and activities that force the need for focus on balance. We've seen our students make tremendous growth. We would like to expand the tools we have available to us currently, which is limited and aged. We will know the grant was successful as we continue to track student data with these resources being available to students. All students will have access to this large purchase throughout the school year as well and we will so success based on choices students make during indoor recess time. We will also trach hallway and multipurpose room behaviors and if students truly utilize the sensory paths to move more calmly and with more focus.
This grant will be implemented for certain students throughout the day who are on behavior plans and take brief breaks. They will be implemented before and/or after intervention time. Students will also use the resources during PE and indoor recess or as an option during outside recess for students who need to stay in and build social and emotional awareness. The paths will be used after we meet in our school wide PLC's to create a cohesive system of how we will all implement them together.
This grant will be shared throughout the school by all teachers and support staff as needed. We are doing all grants as a team at Donner Trail and have deeply discussed objectives of each item and why we think as a school we would best benefit from these resources.
There are no other funding sources for this for us at this time. Our Site Team has discussed our Grant requests extensively.
