Interdistrict Cooperative Grants
These grants are an initiative of the Connecticut State Department of Education and are awarded in an effort to increase academic achievement and to decrease racial, ethnic and economic isolation by encouraging urban/suburban academic projects. ACES is responsible for convening representatives from its member districts to identify regional priorities for the funding of Interdistrict Cooperative Grants. It also implements interdistrict cooperative grants.
Current Interdistrict Cooperative Grants administered directly by ACES include:
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.
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Mathematics Applications Program
The ACES Mathematics Applications Program (MAP) is designed to reduce racial isolation in the South Central Connecticut Region by bringing together students and teachers from Priority and Non-Priority schools. Participants work collaboratively to increase their academic skills in the content area of mathematics, especially Algebraic Reasoning, apply their literacy skills to mathematics through writing, and use technology to enhance their learning.
Teachers and students enter this grant for two years in order to learn how to use the equipment provided by the grant - a web cam, the equation and balance materials and their Groundworks books.
Teachers this year have received books and materials to help in their understanding of the Algebraic Reasoning Standard of the new Mathematics Frameworks, as well as two professional workshop days. Modeling in individual classrooms and coaching, by the grant organizer, helps teachers learn how to use those materials in their classroom and increase their students thinking skills. Partner schools meet five to six times a year to engage in "Getting to Know You" activities, as well as mathematical performance tasks such as The Paper Drop or It is Simply "Marble-ous"
For information about this program, contact Rosemary Burdick.
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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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Sister Schools Program
The purpose of the Sister Schools Grant is to foster K - 12 partnerships between urban and suburban classrooms and/or schools, and to provide high-quality collaborative educational experiences for students from diverse cultures. The goals of Sister Schools are to increase students' academic achievement in a common area of study in the Sister Schools project, and to increase understanding and collaboration among students in urban and suburban environments.
ACES provides training, training materials, and technical assistance and brings teachers of the Sisters Program together during the year to share ideas and to complete projects. ACES works with project members each year to enhance partnerships that become a natural extension of each school's curriculum. ACES also maintains a database of teachers and schools who are interested in establishing connections and planning projects. This project directly addresses Public Act 92-290, requiring school districts to reduce racial, ethnic and economical isolation by providing opportunities for teachers and students to interact with other students and teachers of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds.
Sister Schools partners make a commitment to meet a minimum of six to eight times during the year to visit each other’s schools and to have joint field trip experiences. These trips give the children, their teachers and their parents rich opportunities to know each other while working on their projects.
With the support of ACES specialists, teachers and children participate in writing, technology and in multicultural workshops to create a digital scrapbook of their Sister Schools’ experiences. All of these opportunities are explained during orientation sessions.
The application for Sister Schools can be found online and submitted to Janine Fiorillo. the grant’s coordinator at jfiorillo@aces.org. Teachers who need a partner can contact Ms. Fiorillo for assistance.
Listed below are a samples of Sister Schools projects. Teachers may develop their own project ideas focused on a multicultural theme.
Project Name: A Bridge Between Communities
Children study the similarities and differences found in New Haven and Wallingford and the impact of Long Island Sound on both communities.
Project Name: Environmental Friends
Students from New Haven, CT and Shelton, CT join together for six or seven experiences to develop an awareness of cultural similarities and differences centered on an environmental theme to and foster a sense for our collective stewardship for the earth and our environment.
Project Name: Faces of Greatness, Past and Present
Students read various biographies of famous inventors Americans of multi-cultural backgrounds by using the internet. This project by developing an appreciation for perseverance and struggles of famous Americans.
Project Name: Celebrating Women in American History through Writing
The students learn about a variety of American women; who they are and what they have accomplished. They will also learn and write about the diversity and interlocking stories of women who have created and affirmed the American Spirit.
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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.
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Words! Action! Theatre!
This year 350 middle school students from the Southern Connecticut region will come together to study the arts at ACES Educational Center for the Arts Friday, September 12-Friday, Dec. 19, 2008. Each workshop day two different schools will come together to collaborate. The schools participating this year are: Ansonia Middle, Dodd Middle (Cheshire), Amity Middle Schools (Bethany and Orange), John S. Martinez, Edgewood, Worthington Hooker, and Nathan Hale (all from New Haven), E.C. Adams (Guilford), Dag Hammarskjold (Wallingford), East Haven Academy and North Haven Middle School.
Words! Action! Theatre! (WAT) provides a multidisciplinary learning experience for aspiring young artists by guiding them to bring the word alive, from process to performance. Students will take intense workshops in Theatre, Visual Art and Movement.
- In Art, students will be asked to create a fantasy world which will function as micro-architectural cities, or interconnected systems of abstract sculptural form.
- In Theatre, students will explore some basic concepts of theatre including Ensemble work, Concentration, Listening, Sensory Awareness, Improvisation, Vocal and Movement Skills Characterization and Story Telling. The exercises and activities will culminate into a mini-performance.
- In Movement, students will examine theatre movement through improvisation and exploration with masks, props and fabric. Students will explore how varying physical and spatial relationships affect their relationship to their partner or the group and how these changes influence the imaginary world they have created.
All art forms will include reflective discussions about the students’ exploration and experience.
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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 will enable about 250 high school students from urban, rural and suburban districts in Connecticut to meet the stated goals of this interdistrict grant. Engaged in a series of planned activities throughout the year, they will get to know each other, become familiar with languages spoken in the Middle East, and explore categories of culture from the perspective both of their own heritage as well as peoples of the Middle East.
The students will first meet as a large group at Yale University’s Luce Hall for introductory sessions on getting to know each other, developing an appreciation for their diverse backgrounds, being exposed to several Middle Eastern languages, and learning about such topics as the music, art, and history of the region. Next, their teachers, who will have previously been trained by specialists in the Middle East, will follow up this day by choosing a topic related to their own academic discipline on which to design instruction in their classrooms. They will also have received training in educational technology and will use this knowledge to enhance their lessons and enable their students to share ideas online with students in other districts and internationally. In addition, through visits to schools from language mentors provided by PIER (Programs in International Education Resources) at Yale University, students will acquire basic competence in one of the languages of the Middle East. These mentors will use the setting of the medina, a Middle Eastern city/marketplace, to generate relevant vocabulary and other linguistic skills. During the year, the students will work on projects in collaboration with a partner class and share their work with the large group at the end of the program in a simulation of the medina, again at Luce Hall.
For further information, please contact Meryl Menon, 203.407.4452.
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