Foundation For Allen Schools Funded Classroom Grants at

Cheatham Elementary

2022-2023 Classroom Grants

Art in History - Ancient Greece Pottery

This grant under Advanced Academics - AP/IB/GT Curriculum was awarded to Karri Decker and will benefit 50 students at Cheatham Elementary.

AIM students at Cheatham Elementary create replicas of an ancient Greek drinking vessel called an "oinochoai." This pottery piece was made in the Geometric style between 900-700 BC.

Science Made Fun - Science Experiments That Come to YOU!

This grant under Advanced Academics - AP/IB/GT Curriculum was awarded to Karri Decker and will benefit 70 students at Cheatham Elementary.

Cheatham "Chargers" AIM students will explore the amazing world of electricity. They will learn what's "current" as they create an electroscope, build circuits, and much more.

Same Book Book Clubs

This grant under English Language Arts (Elementary) & Dyslexia Curriculum was awarded to Katrina Byrd and will benefit 200 students at Cheatham Elementary.

Building a reading community. . . one book club at a time!   Second grade readers will sharpen their reading, comprehension, and communication skills through book clubs.  Book clubs provide students with the opportunity to think about their reading and share their thinking with their peers - creating a community of readers and thinkers.

Versatile Learning With Versatiles

This grant under Math - Elementary Curriculum was awarded to Mikala Hartis and will benefit 100 students at Cheatham Elementary.

VersaTiles help put together children's thinking a piece at a time! Through a variety of hands-on activities, students will be able to use this self-checking resource to build confidence in reading and math. Not only will students enjoy this resource, teachers will be able to differentiate activities with ease to meet students at all levels.

Kodaly Training for Elementary Music Teachers

This grant under Fine Arts Curriculum was awarded to Jeff Turner and will benefit 10,000 students across all AISD Elementary Schools.

Two Allen ISD elementary music teachers will attend 3 weeks of intensive Kodaly training at SMU. The strategies, techniques, and resources from this training will be an incredible asset to the teacher to better deliver the elementary music curriculum and will be shared with all our elementary educators across AISD.

ALLen Reads 2022

This grant under Library / Makerspace Curriculum was awarded to Kelly Clewell and will benefit 20,000 students across AISD and benefits every campus in Allen. 

ALLen Reads encourages the entire Allen community to read the same book or the grade-level appropriate companion book. The grant provides copies of the selected books to all campuses in Allen ISD, and the students have access to community events related to the books, such as author and illustrator speakers, writing presentations, and musical performances.

Math by the Book

This grant under Math - Elementary Curriculum was awarded to Michelle Stewart and Katie Snider and will benefit 2,898 students in Kindergarten and 1^st grade at EVERY Allen ISD elementary campus.

This grant will provide read aloud sets of books that link literary and math skills.   We know many students love stories but may have a fear of math or even math anxiety.  Students are able to connect concepts to context providing an increased level of engagement and retention. Stories bring math to life!   House Bill 3 puts a focus on early literacy and math skills. This resource would be helpful in integrating math and literacy in the early grade levels. An integrated experience creates deeper learning connections for students. Science and Social Studies have already embedded read alouds for K- 3 curriculum documents and this grant will support integration in math as well.

BRAINball

This grant under Physical Education Curriculum was awarded to Geoben Johnson and Katie Snider and will benefit 16,500 students across Allen ISD in grades K – 9^th.

BRAINball is an innovative and unique physical education learning system that merges physical activity and academic learning through play. In addition to the physical benefits, significant improvement will be seen in gross and fine motor skills, cooperative and cognitive learning.  Brainball has proven to produce positive changes in letter recognition,  students read better, improve mathematical skills, movement and writing skills. Research also shows positive changes in graphomotor skills, eye-hand coordination, and temporal-spatial orientation improvement when used on a consistent basis. The Brainball set includes 100 premade games/activities for K-6 that can be adapted for grades 7-9. Training will be provided to allow easy integration into district curriculum and to academic classroom teachers that want to use it for enhancing learning in their class. The brainball set is appropriate for Kindergarten through High School and can be adapted for students with special needs and learning deficits.

I Can See Clearly Now!

This grant under Special Education Curriculum was awarded to Patricia Reyna, Sherri Idbeis, Karen McCrary and Colleen Dunphy and will benefit 45 students across Allen ISD who have a visual impairment.

Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments serve students throughout the district and provide consult and direct instruction for teachers and students with blindness or visual impairments. An iPad Pro is a tool that makes accessing learning material possible for students that struggle with seeing on a regular iPad screen. An iPad Pro also serves as an evaluation tool for TSVI's and our Orientation and Mobility instructor in the district.

ByrdseedTV

This grant under Advanced Academics - AP/IB/GT Curriculum was awarded to Kari Lockhart and will benefit 1,474 students that are in our GT programs in years K-6.

ByrdseedTV provides gifted and talented teachers and learners with resources that foster deep and complex learning. Activities from Byrdseed are designed and used by a teacher of gifted students, and facilitate critical and creative thinking, inductive and deductive thinking skills, as well as encourage creative individual investigations.

2021-2022 Classroom Grants

Building up STEAM!

This grant under Advanced Academics - AP/IB/GT Curriculum was awarded to Karri Decker and will benefit 100 students. 

"Imagineering" supplies will create opportunities for students to be producers of content and products and will facilitate to students the idea of entrepreneurship through innovation. This is Problem Based Learning! The materials will also be available for other grade levels (K-6) to use to support their integration of STEAM in the classroom.

 FUNdamental Phonics in First Grade

This grant under English Language Arts (Elementary) & Dyslexia Curriculum was awarded to Mikala Hartis and will benefit 100 students.

Cheatham first graders are putting the FUN back in phonics fundamentals! We are using fun centers to engage learners at all levels to help build their literacy skills and continue growing our phonemic and phonological awareness.

Breakout Edu

This grant under Science / STEAM Curriculum was awarded to Courtney Knight and will benefit 800 students.

This grant provides a school-wide subscription for BreakoutEDU which will allow all students at Cheatham Elementary to develop problem-solving skills and work collaboratively to complete standards-aligned escape rooms, both digitally and in the physical classroom. Students will also have the opportunity to use their technology skills to think logically about their curriculum and develop their own digital escape rooms to be shared with their classmates, fostering opportunities for communication, teamwork, and rigorous thought.

Early Childhood Special Education Assessment Tools for Success!

This grant under Special Education Curriculum was awarded to Holly Sanchez along with Karen Ruehlen, and Mariana Esparza will benefit 140 students at both Cheatham and Rountree Elementary.

The Allen ISD ECSE Team is in need of testing kits to use for the annually administered VB- MAPP Assessment (Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program). These testing kits are critical to accurately measure our students? abilities and areas of growth, and set goals to ensure their progress. Having the same materials to use across all classrooms will help us to maintain consistency and accuracy when assessing each and every student.

DT - Leveled Readers

This grant under English Language Arts (Elementary) & Dyslexia Curriculum awarded to Ella Jones along with Jill Jaska, Susie Barlow, Deb Scott, Carli Burke, Dena Goddard, Amber Arnold, Candice Frazier, Janice Harrop, Maria Burnes, Julieta Henderson, Angela Lunde, Shia Valdovino, Janell Cook, Tami Everett.  The grant will benefit 900 students at the following campuses: Anderson, Bolin, Boyd, Chandler, Cheatham, Evans, Green Kerr, Lindsey and Ford Middle School.

Connected texts are decodable books that use predictable words and word patterns through engaging stories. The Dyslexia Therapist can use these books, in combination with other materials, to address the student?s fluency and comprehension skills. The Allen ISD Dyslexia Department wants to enhance its program by giving its students the opportunity to read these books so they can become stronger readers.