Teacher Innovative Grants

The Clear Creek Education Foundation SurPrize Patrol supplies teachers with grant money to implement innovative programs for the coming school year.  Since the Foundation’s inception in 1992,  more than $800,000 in innovative teacher grants has been disbursed district-wide. The Foundation develops ongoing activities and projects that involve the entire community to build a broad base of funding and support. Tax deductible contributions include funds derived from planned giving, endowment gifts, matched giving and restricted or allocated gifts, as well as in-kind gifts. Funds provided by the Foundation directly benefit students in the Clear Creek Independent School District.

Past Grant Recipients Share Their Successes

Mad Scientists of Clear Creek High School

These are photos of the Clear Creek High School Ready, Set, Teach! students who are involved in the CCEF MAD SCIENTIST GRANT.
The students are gaining a better understanding of Elementary Science from Mrs. Audrey Soto's 5th graders as the younger students teach the future teachers a lesson on Worms.

The RST students will then create MAD SCIENTIST KITS to use in their internships this year.

Pennie J. Yancey
Ready, Set, Teach!

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One of the grants I wrote and received was for Distance Learning. This involves my class connecting live with experts from around the world using our TV’s and video conference equipment. One of the experts I choose to connect with this year was the Challenger Learning Center in Brownsburg, Indiana. As a culmination to our non fiction writing unit, my first grade students had to research the planets and few other space features and share their knowledge during a reader’s theatre type connection. We traveled to each planet and learned from our fellow classmates, and our expert in Indiana, all about the planets. The kids had so much fun as they learned this new information.

As a fun way to remember the event, I used the green screen equipment I used from another grant I was awarded to take some pictures of my kids as if they were in space. I then printed the pictures out and sent them home with each student. Below is a slideshow of the pictures I took. They are truly “out of this world!”

Brandy Magdos
First Grade Teacher
P.H. Greene Elementary
http://magdos.wikispaces.com/



Click on image to launch video

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The foundation funded a grant for Clear View High School that allowed the school to become a WeatherBug weather center. The real-time weather system allows teachers to integrate math, science and geography lessons by utilizing live data from the world's largest weather network. Click the image above to view the current station reading from Clear View High School.

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[Click Image for PDF copy]
 

I thought you might be interested to see how the Innovative Grant monies are benefiting our students here at Creek High School. Our students have taken control of one of the Goldstone's Deep Space radio telescopes three times to record radio signals from Jupiter and quasars. By Monday we will have added two more telescope runs of two more quasars. All data is sent to NASA JPL scientists for inclusion in their data bases. This has been an awesome experience and opportunity for our students to participate in actual solar system and deep space research. Because of our participation, we have been invited to participate in teleconferences with the Principal Investigators at JPL. The impact of this program has not yet been realized, but I am confident that as the word gets out it will come to its full potential as a teaching tool.

Kathy Cloud
CCHS Science

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