Interdistrict Grant Programs
The following Interdistrict Grant programs will bring together students from diverse communities and backgrounds to explore, communicate, share and analyze their projects. Students from different schools will become virtual partners using videoconferencing, face-to-face meetings, concurrent presentations and publishing their project materials in a variety of media.
For more information on ACES videoconferencing go to the Videoconferencing website.
Click below for more information about each Grants Program.
Project LUCID (Literacy Unifying Children in Diversity)
Online: A Writing Experience
(Grades 3-6)
Transforming Learning with Videoconferencing
Teaching American History
Sister Schools Program
Mathematics Applications Program
The Technology Advantage: Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce Today
The Medina: A Middle Eastern Marketplace of Ideas
Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2)
Professional Learning Academy for Middle School Math Teachers
Project LUCID (Literacy Unifying Children in Diversity)
Project LUCID provides frequent, long-term opportunities for students in Grades 1-6 to work collaboratively to improve their reading and writing achievement and increase their knowledge of diversity through culture and history. Through the use of videoconferencing technology and personal collaboration, these class-to-class visits allow students to work in small group literature discussions, virtual literature circles, and tasks that revolve around multicultural themes.
For further information, please contact Barbara Haeffner or Howard Gunther.
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Online: A Writing Experience (Grades 3-6)
With the emergence of new technologies, this grant has been redesigned to incorporate a technology component that will allow students to increase academic achievement in the areas of written and verbal communication, technology, and cultural understanding while helping districts reduce issues of economic, ethnic and geographic isolation. This program provides students in third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades from various districts the opportunities to become virtual partners, and work collaboratively to complete authentic tasks and activities that extend their classroom curriculum. Students have the opportunity to collaborate with their peers from economically, geographically, and culturally diverse communities to enhance all of their academic skills, while focusing on student writing skills.
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Transforming Learning with Videoconferencing
Transforming Learning with Videoconferencing has successfully connected students from economically, geographically, and culturally diverse communities for the past six years. This program provides students and teachers from various districts the opportunity to become virtual partners and work collaboratively to develop an authentic task that extends their classroom curriculum. Transforming Learning with Videoconferencing addresses many of the foundation skills and competencies as outlined in The Connecticut Framework and the Connecticut Common Core of Learning. Students work towards developing the proficiency, confidence, and fluency in speaking, listening and viewing needed to me et the literacy demands of the 21st century. Students explore information and arguments from various points of view to think critically and creatively to solve problems. Through the natural progression of the collaborative process students begin to appreciate the world views and perceptions other students based on their cultural identities.
For further information, please contact Barbara Haeffner or Howard Gunther.
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Teaching American History
ACES has been awarded $1,000,000 as part of the 2008 Teaching American History federal grant program. ACES will work in conjunction with the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Yale History Department to conduct a multi-year, document-intensive professional development institute for middle school and high school teachers on the history and development of the idea and practice of democracy in America. Each project year, historians and cultural institutions will work with participants on content, highlighting a period of U.S. history that influenced the development of democracy, with special attention given to key documents related to the specific subject. The five broad themes are: The Foundations of American Democracy, Slavery and Emancipation, The Struggle for Democracy in Twentieth Century American, Women and the Struggle for Inclusion, and Race, Ethnicity, and Civil Rights.
For further information, please contact Joanne Manginelli.
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Sister Schools Program
Janine Fiorillo, Coordinator
The ACES Sister Schools Interdistrict Grant Program enables K – 12 students, their teachers, and their parents to reduce racial, ethnic, cultural and economic isolation while they collaborate in a multicultural-themed project of their choice. Partners meet a minimum of five times a year to visit each other’s schools and have field trip experiences. These trips give the students, their teachers and their parents rich opportunities to know each other while working on their projects.
Students will also show growth in writing and technology skills by learning how to develop a digital scrapbook/journal as a means of sharing the experiences of their partnership, and their projects. The Digital Scrapbook/Journal will be a means to enhance the students’ skills in PowerPoint; CMT/CAPT aligned narrative, expository and/or persuasive writing; and problem solving skills. To support growth in these areas, students, their teachers, and their parents will have multiple opportunities to participate in diversity and integrated writing and technology workshops funded by Sister Schools and provided by ACES Education Specialists at ACES and at schools. While ACES recommends that teachers apply to Sister Schools with a partner, the ACES staff also assists teachers in locating partners.
For further information, please contact Janine Fiorillo, 203-407-4404, or Dee Colson, 203-407-4403. You may also download a copy of the application here.
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Mathematics Applications Program
The ACES Math/Science Applications Program (M.A.P.) is a year-long interdistrict grant for students in grades 3-6 from partnering classrooms to work together on mathematical applications and Connecticut Science Curriculum Embedded Performance Tasks while fostering positive diversity awareness and multicultural attitudes. Reduction of isolation is achieved by bringing together students from urban and suburban or transition schools for at least four face-to-face meetings. These meetings enable students to experience life beyond their classroom, district and town, while fostering friendships with other students. The program is designed for students to engage in authentic learning experiences and to develop positive relationships while working collaboratively on mathematical and science related activities. This year, students will apply related mathematics and literacy skills to complete and extend the Science Curriculum Embedded Performance task for their grade level. Throughout the program partnering classrooms will explore each other’s cultural backgrounds, learn more about themselves and gain a better understanding of students from other areas of the state.
To augment what is accomplished through face-to-face meetings, participating students and teachers will use technology such as email, a webcam, or Blackboard to work collaboratively and share solutions “live”. ACES Education Specialists will facilitate on-site collaboration a minimum of two times per class.
For further information, please contact Emily Freel. You may also download a copy of the application here.
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The Technology Advantage: Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce Today
The Technology Advantage: Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce Today is a year-long Interdistrict Grant for grades 7 – 12 that will reduce racial, ethnic and social isolation by pairing together students from various backgrounds to create interactive tutorial websites designed to be shared with each other and with other schools. Partnering classes will be divided into teams with each team member selecting a job responsibility. Simulating a business environment, team member responsibilities include a project coordinator, web designer, technical writer, multi-media animator, and graphics, video and sound editor.
Website themes will be aligned with identified areas of need in the CMTs and CAPT. Teams will work collaboratively both face-to-face and remotely to research their theme, organize their findings, and create their website. Upon completion, the sites will be hosted by ACES and judged by pre-defined criteria by a panel of Digital Design professors and students from Quinnipiac University. A culminating activity will be an Awards Celebration and a Career Fair.
For more information or an application, visit the Tech Advantage website, or contact Jim Moyle or Tara Rothman.
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The Medina: A Middle Eastern Marketplace of Ideas
The Medina: A Middle Eastern Marketplace of Ideas is a year-long interdistrict grant for grades 7 – 12 that will help reduce racial, ethnic and social isolation by pairing students from varied backgrounds to collaborate on an academic project. These students will engage in a series of planned activities throughout the year, become familiar with languages spoken in the Middle East, and explore categories of culture from the perspective both of their own heritage and from the heritages of peoples of the Middle East.
A large group introductory meeting at Yale University’s Luce Hall will be followed by teachers' collaborating to develop a curricular unit on a topic related to their own academic discipline. Teachers will receive training and support from ACES in educational technology in order to enhance their lessons and teach students to collaborate and communicate online with students in other districts and internationally. In addition, PIER (Programs in International Education Resources) at Yale University will provide students with opportunities to interact with professors of four of the languages of the Middle East: Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Turkish. The setting of the medina, a Middle Eastern city/marketplace, will be our guiding metaphor throughout the year as students work on projects in collaboration with a partner class and share their work with the large group at the end of the program, again at Luce Hall.
For further information, please contact Leslie Abbatiello, 203-407-4402, or Ellen Hughes, 203-407-4447.
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Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2)
Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) provides statewide professional development services and activities to aid administrators and teachers in improving student academic achievement through the use of technology in elementary schools and secondary schools. The goals are to: (A) assist every student in crossing the digital divide by ensuring that every student is technologically literate by the time the student finishes the eighth grade regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location, or disability; and (B) encourage the effective integration of technology resources and systems with teacher training and curriculum development to establish research-based instructional methods that can be widely implemented as best practices by State educational agencies and local educational agencies.
For further information, please contact Barbara Haeffner.
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Professional Learning Academy for Middle School Math Teachers
The Professional Learning Academy for Middle School Math Teachers will provide 60.5 hours of in-depth, multifaceted professional development in math for teachers of grades 6-8. During week-long summer institutes in 2008 and at follow-up sessions during the 2008-2009 school year, mathematics professors from CCSU will provide in-depth instruction in sophisticated mathematics concepts. This math content will be aligned with CSDE Standards and the Model Curriculum for grades 6-8 and areas of identified weakness in student math achievement in partner districts.
Strong content support from university faculty will be bolstered with support in how to use SDE standards and model curriculum to develop instruction, best math teaching practices, and how to use Common Formative Assessment (CFA) to improve teaching in a math classroom. Teachers will learn how to use CFA to support a standards-based curriculum, identify what students know, and target instruction to gaps in understanding. This will equip teachers to use math instructional strategies that support areas of weakness and reach those with a range of learning styles.
For reinforcement and support, teacher participants will receive on-site coaching to help them improve math instructional planning and practice. ACES Education Specialists will observe participants and review their lesson plans and student work. Participants will receive structured feedback on their practices that are applicable to their needs and student populations.
Lead Instructors for the project include: Dr. Phil Halloran – Math Department, CCSU; and Emily Freel – ACES Education Specialist. Project Evaluator for the project is Dr. Nadia Ward, Yale University. Dr. Ward will use multiple sources of data to provide ongoing information and guidance and will illustrate the project’s success in impacting math teaching and achievement.
For further information, please contact Emily Freel.
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Schools
Technology Services
Program Development
