Suncoast Credit Union

We want all students, regardless of current strengths or weaknesses to realize that they are in control of their academic futures. When they walk through our doors, we want them to collaborate, work through their struggles and learn that they can grow as students and people. As teachers, we want to maximize ALEK's use due to the high correlation to the FAST assessments and make gains to decrease the learning loss that we saw last year in English and math.

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Positive Reinforcement for Struggling Learners

School:
Gulfview Middle 
Subject:
Other 
Teacher:
Kimberly Sweat 
 
Priscilla Arriaga, Laurie Henning 
Students Impacted:
90 
Grade:
8 
Date:
September 11, 2023

Investor

Thank you to the following investor for funding this grant.

 

A Champion For Learning - $246.53

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Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 106

As of January 12, 2024, 106 students from our "at-risk" population have recieved classroom incentives. This includes 8th grade students who have IEP's or 504's, are part of our ELL population, and are currently in the math and english/reading intensive classes because of their low scores on the FAST tests last spring. In addition to those students, we have students from our IBI-3 program who have reached a level 3 in the unit and are mainstreamed into the general education classes. 

 

I expected the students to be excited to select high interest items on Friday. We did see increased class participation and we saw more students completing their ALEK's topics. Last year at his time, the average ALEK pie progress for our 8th graders was 39%. This year, our average pie progress is 48%.

 

We also saw an unexpected benefit. We have a difficult time enforcing the rule that every 8th grader will wear a lanyard with their ID badge.  The students forget them or the lanyards they are given at the beginning of the year get broken. When this happens, they are sent to ISS to pay for a temporary ID sticker. After so many times the students are given lunch detention. Having the option to earn a lanyard has been huge. Some students keep an extra lanyard and ID in my office. Others keep an extra one in their first period class. Having the chance to earn a lanyard has decreased fines for temporary ID stickers, and lunch detentions for the habitual offenders who never seemed to have their ID.

 

Last but not least, we put the water bottles on our incentative list knowing that it would be a "big ticket" item that the students would want to earn and decorate with the stickers. In order to be able to earn them, you had to actively use your ALEK's notebook. This means writing out the problems and showing your work. Another positive benefit from this is that we have less students asking to leave class and get a drink of water. At this age, keeping them in class and working is half of the battle.  Thank you for all that you do and for making it possible for our students to earn such amazing incentives!

 

Original Grant Overview

Goal

We want all students, regardless of current strengths or weaknesses to realize that they are in control of their academic futures. When they walk through our doors, we want them to collaborate, work through their struggles and learn that they can grow as students and people. As teachers, we want to maximize ALEK's use due to the high correlation to the FAST assessments and make gains to decrease the learning loss that we saw last year in English and math. 

 

What will be done with my students

Our current 8th graders had a difficult year last year. Due to teacher staffing issues, many of our students had to be in classes with long-term substitutes that may not have had all of the qualifications or positivity that we expect in our regular staff members at Gulfview Middle School. We need to encourage our math students to complete their ALEK's PIE and to improve our reading Lexiles in English. Please help us purchase some simple classroom rewards so that we can continue to encourage our students and show them that with hard work, they will reach their academic goals. 

 

Benefits to my students

This incentive program is being offered in our intensive math and our regular 8th grade English Language Arts classes. These five classes contain a large population of ESE or ELL students, as well as some of our average students who are often unmotivated. In addition to teaching the 8th grade standards, we need to go back and reteach many of the 7th grade standards that our students did not master due to lack of regular teachers. Setting academic goals and challenging themselves as they work towards small rewards brings great joy to our classes. 

 

Budget Narrative

This list is all items ordered off of Amazon. It consists of school lanyards, Croc charms, lanyard charms, stickers, and plastic, reusable water bottles that the students can put stickers on. 

 

Items

# Item Cost
1 Cool Random Stickers Pack 55 (4) $27.88
2 Quote Stickers, Positive 200 (2) $21.98
3 Stickers-Laptop/Skakeboard/teens (2) $13.98
4 Hroatph-Croc Charms-Sports 139 pieces $13.99
5 hitioCC - 100 Pack Random Cartoon Anime Croc Charms $13.46
6 Wenobby- Croc Charms $9.99
7 50 Strong Bulk Water Bottles $59.99
8 Sherr 500 Color Lanyards $47.99
9 fiintrwa - 50 pcs Lanyard Charms $27.28
10 Cinvo 40 Pcs $9.99
  Total: $246.53

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Suncoast Credit Union