Latest Grants Awarded

ZEF 2022 Fall Classroom Grants Announced

The Zionsville Education Foundation (ZEF) awarded $24,597.12 for the 2022 Fall Classroom Grants.

Inspiring Future Engineers
Emily Allen and Emily Smith, Zionsville Middle School ($7,080)
With the use of Infento Kits, students will be given the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the engineering design process. This grant will give students the ability to explore how engineering impacts their lives by creating their own life-sized transportation and inspire more students to pursue STEM careers.

Boomwhackers
Meagan Brown, Trailside Elementary ($136.73)
Students will have the opportunity to learn how to play Boomwhackers percussion instruments to further develop their understanding of melody, harmony, and beat. Each tube is tuned to a musical pitch determined by the tube’s length, and its own specific color. Music is color coded, allowing elementary students to read efficiently, scaffolding traditional music literacy in later grades.

Promoting Self-Reflection and Supporting Student Growth with year-Long Digital Portfolios
Jennifer Hamelmann, Union Elementary ($1,841.70)
This grant gives Mrs. Hamelmann’s classroom tools to create individual, year-long digital portfolios. Each student’s portfolio will be a purposeful collection of work and experiences that demonstrate his/her efforts, achievements, growth, and personal reflections from the school year.

Jump Rope for Just Right Reading
Kimberly Gray and Rebekah Graham, Boone Meadow Elementary ($3,992.28)
Provides high-quality, engaging, decodable texts for early and emergent readers accompanied by online resources and teacher’s guides. The books will promote student choice and provide students direct access through classroom libraries.

MaKey MaKey Young Inventors
Molly Seward, Trailside Elementary ($1,529.94)
Provides the STEM classroom with the hands-on learning tool, MaKey MaKey. It is designed to connect everyday objects to computer keys. Using a circuit board, alligator clips, and a USB cable, MaKey MaKey uses closed-loop electrical signals to send the computer either a keyboard stroke or mouse click signal. Students will also explore circuits and conductivity to make musical instruments, game controllers, or voting machines.

Sidewalk Astronomy
Matt Mulholland and Katie Willour, Zionsville Community High School ($3,108)
The ZCHS Astronomy Club will purchase a Dobsonian Reflecting Telescope that will help foster the curiosity of ZCS students and the Zionsville community at large. The ZCHS Astronomy and Science Clubs will arrange for periodic nighttime viewing field trips for ZCHS students to learn about and observe various cosmological phenomena. They will also conduct community outreach nighttime viewing experiences at public events giving members of the ZCS school community the opportunity to look at the night sky through a professional grade high-powered telescope.

Social Studies/Language Arts Literature Circles: Books Are Windows and Doors
Randi Schreiner, Zionsville Middle School ($1,979.46)
Seventh grade Social Studies and Language Arts classes will receive literature circle books that connect to the existing curriculum. Students will choose a book to read while meeting with other students who choose the same title. They will participate in classroom activities that fit with each particular novel and make connections to what they are learning in Social Studies at the same time.

Steel Eagles Robotics – Go VEX!
Karen Stillions, Pleasant View Elementary ($1,142.85)
Robotics materials will keep the PVE robotics team moving forward and up to date with current competition needs through additional equipment for this year’s “Slap Shot” game. New robotics brains, remotes, and additional parts will further enhance the students’ building, coding, and competition success.

The Chicken Club
Mitzi Macaluso, Zionsville Middle School ($1,185.51)
Materials provided will include a chicken coop and six hens. The Chicken Club provides students with hands-on learning about biology, compassionate animal husbandry, food science, small business practices with the egg sales, and sustainable living practices. Students will be responsible for taking care of the flock. They will practice responsibility, math, teamwork, organizational skills and develop a sense of pride.

Scootin’ and Chutin’ – Teamwork and Fitness Fun with Scooters and the Parachute!
Garrett Stephens, Boone Meadow Elementary ($2,600)
A set of scooters and a giant parachute will give BME Wellness classes access to endless ways to have fun, stay active, and work together. Whether it is a cooperation activity with the parachute, or a relay race with the scooters, these pieces of equipment will be student favorites. Every Boone Meadow student will benefit from this new equipment several times throughout the year.

Past Grants Awarded