PTA Grant Awards

1/15/2024 4:18 pm

Coding Program Grant

With this grant, your student is receiving the following extra coding opportunities this semester:

• CodeMonkey is an award-winning block- and text-based coding curriculum for grades K–5. Through animated games, students learn basic coding concepts such as sequence, loops, events, and conditionals, before continuing to variables, functions, objects, and arrays. Code Monkey’s text-based lessons use both CoffeeScript and Python. CoffeeScript is a language that compiles JavaScript but has an easier-to-learn syntax for new coders.
• Ozaria is a standards-aligned curriculum built with 6-8th grade in mind but extends below and above those grade levels. It takes a game-based approach to teaching text-based coding in Python or JavaScript. The game is framed by a fantasy adventure narrative, told through illustrated scenes which lead to a puzzle game that students must complete to advance the storyline. The curriculum is well-structured and includes a mix of whole-class instruction, independent practice, group work, and creative opportunities.

Stem Week Grant

With this grant, your student is receiving these extra programming this semester, including:

• Rocket Science: Water Rockets from the Museum of Flight
  Learn about the history, science, and design principles of rockets. Then work as a team to build a rocket out of a 2-liter bottle and water.
• Blood and Guts Exhibits from Pacific Science Center: Students build a skeleton, test their senses, and see specimens up close in this exhibit set that tours the human body.

Community Garden Grant

Each Medina student will be involved in the gardening process. Classes will be invited to plant seeds, help with weeding or harvesting, and just enjoy the garden itself. Classrooms will be able to visit the garden to make observations, perform experiments, and supplement our wonderful, hands-on science curriculum.

• Kindergarten - Trees and Weather: The Trees and Weather Module provides students with solid experiences to help them develop an understanding of what plants (and animals) need to survive and the relationship between their needs and where they live.
• 1st Grade - Plants and Animals: Students observe firsthand the structures of plants and discover ways to propagate new plants from mature plants (from seeds, bulbs, roots, and stem cuttings). They observe and describe changes that occur as plants grow, and compare classroom plants to those in the schoolyard.
• 2nd Grade - Insects and Plants: students grow one type of plant from seed and observe it through its life cycle to produce new seeds. They gain experience with the ways that plants and insects interact in feeding relationships, seed dispersal, and pollination, and students develop models to communicate their understanding.
• 3rd Grade - Structures of Life (they focus on seeds, sprouting, and germination)The Structures of Life Module consists of four investigations dealing with big ideas in life science—plants and animals are organisms and exhibit a variety of strategies for life, organisms are complex and have a variety of observable structures and behaviors, organisms have varied but predictable life cycles and reproduce their kind, and individual organisms have variations in their traits that may provide an advantage in surviving in the environment.
• 4th Grade - Environments: this unit focuses on the interaction between animals and plants in an ecosystem.
• 5th Grade- Living Systems: Students come to understand through a variety of experiences that plants get the materials they need for growth primarily from water and air, and that energy in animals’ food was once energy from the Sun. There are many opportunities for students to explore how human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life can have major effects on these systems.

The Student Changemakers Committee, a leadership club of 4th and 5th graders led by Mike Saltz, strives to make positive changes in our school and community. They have been tirelessly planning to develop a garden that will serve our students this spring.