In addition to our Excellence in Education grants, the foundation also makes special, larger grants to the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District to fund grade or district-wide programs. These grants are requested either by a group of teachers or by curriculum supervisors, and are approved by our Board of Trustees if they fit our mission.

Our most recent special grants include:

OSMO Learning Kits

This grant totals $10.620 and provides funding for K-3 grade students in DNS, MHS, TCS & WES. Osmo merges tactile exploration with innovative technology, actively engaging children in the learning process. In the K-3 classroom, Osmo can be used as a station for skill building, 1:1 with the teacher for intervention purposes or guided practice, to promote math or word study talk in a small group, or as a whole class while projecting the activities. Independently, Osmo builds confidence as students move through the activities and levels. Kids learn more when lessons are hands-on and engaging and Osmo is the perfect addition to the K-3 classroom for this purpose.

Swift Microscopes

This grant totals $23,700 and provides funding for high school students at HSS & HSN. These microscopes are the most advanced, and yet appropriate for the study of STEM at the high school level, technology with which to engage in the life sciences. They will allow students to explore the normally invisible world of the cell and will be able to use these high quality devices to access the internal world of subcellular structures that most student microscopes preclude from observation. Our students will be able to access top of the line equipment that will go far to meet their needs. These microscopes offer superior imaging, focusing, and more eye-friendly LED lighting. Furthermore, the digital features that are unique with this model, are compatible with MAC and Windows. 

Sensing the Change: Using PocketLab Sensors as a Fun Way to Collect Accurate Data to Analyze Air Quality and Climate Change

Steven Per & Julia Giordano, GMS: 8th Grade students
This project provides our students a hands-on and engaging approach that centers on collecting and analyzing data by novel PocketLab sensors. The work includes many STEM practices including making models, designing studies, and ultimately supporting understandings so students recognize firsthand how the impacts of adverse air quality correlate with climate change. Students will determine and set up model conditions in the classroom laboratory and use PocketLab Voyagers and Temperature Probes in various locations throughout the school investigating climate change and air pollution in our environment. This introductory work will spark an interest in students as citizen scientists, to extend preliminary work to further evaluation of air sources in the community.

Equipment to Assist Teachers in Virtual Learning

This Grant totals $10,000, and provides funding to purchase necessary equipment to assist teachers of our district in virtual learning experience during the pandemic.

STEAM Makerspaces

This Grant totals $10,000, and provides funding to create STEAM Makerspaces in every school of the district. It will give students an opportunity to dive into design challenges, blocks for engineering, circuits and consumables to engage in STEAM, build research, create, collaborate, and “learn by doing”. Makerspaces foster innovation through hands-on experimentation. Students will have the opportunity to be creative and apply personalized learning strategies to develop their own ideas, methods or products.

Our past special grants include:

Astrophotography

This grant totals $7,400 and provides funding to 10-12 grade students at HSS & HSN. It expands the capabilities in Astronomy class to include the ability to conduct photography of the planets, stars, and even deep sky objects such as nebulae and galaxies. Astronomy can be a fulfilling experience using just observational equipment. Expanding this to include direct imaging, showing the stellar dust of supernova remnants; or distant, faint galaxies; and other structures adds more depth to the experience, as students can learn about the concepts of the course not only from their textbook, but from the direct images and measurements they can take, themselves.

Sensing the Change: Using PocketLab Sensors as a Fun Way to Collect Accurate Data to Analyze Air Quality and Climate Change

This Grant totals $9063, and provides funding to 6th grade students at GMS. It gives students a hands-on and engaging approach that centers on collecting and analyzing data by novel PocketLab sensors. The work includes many STEM practices including making models, designing studies, and ultimately supporting understandings so students recognize firsthand how the impacts of adverse air quality correlate with climate change. Students will determine and set up model conditions in the classroom laboratory and use PocketLab Voyagers and Temperature Probes in various locations throughout the school investigating climate change and air pollution in our environment. This introductory work will spark an interest in students as citizen scientists, to extend preliminary work to further evaluation of air sources in the community.

Laser Cutters – Bridging the Digital to Physical Divide

This Grant totals $20,356, and provides funding to 6-12 grade students at CMS, GMS, HSN & HSS. In the Engineering Technology Department, the programs fabricate, prototype, and make models of many products and components. Most of the materials used are cut by hand or with power tools, which lack the precision and the ability to create repetitive identical parts. With the new CO2 laser cutters which are a clean, safe, and effective method for cutting and engraving precisely dimensioned thin materials. The use of the CO2 laser would allow students to precisely cut materials that cannot be currently processed such as fabric, leather, matte board, melamine, paper, mylar, rubber, wood veneer, fiberglass and cork. Using this technology opens many doors into the design and fabrication process.

Intersecting Environmental & Cultural Awareness

This grant totaling $3182 will benefit Millstone River & Village elementary school students by providing the necessary equipment to give the students a platform, in which they can research, create and explore world cultures through alternate methodologies. The indoor hydroponic gardening system would enable students to explore their interests and studies with a wider-audience; breaking through the walls of contextual understandings to hands-on learning experiences that makes the learning experience more authentic and meaningful. Having a broader audience encourages learners to revise their work and to strive for a higher quality final product. These resources would also afford students the opportunity to learn the mechanics, physics, and programming to create the ideal environment for growing herbs and spices from across the world. Through this integration of technology, students will enhance their research and programming skills through the investigation of world cultures.

Intersecting Environmental & Cultural Awareness

This grant totaling $4465.28 will benefit High School North & High School South students by providing the necessary equipment to give students a platform, in which they can research, create and explore how food is grown and take part in the process through alternate growing methodologies. The equipment provided would enable students to incorporate physical science, biology, engineering and chemistry into their culinary class; utilizing hands-on learning experiences that makes the learning experience more authentic and meaningful. Having a broader understanding of how food is grown and goes from seed to plate, encourages learners to revise their work and to strive for a higher quality final product. It would also give students the opportunity to learn the mechanics, physics, and programming to create the ideal environment for growing fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices from across the world.

Ultimate STEM Weather Station

This grant, totaling $6040, supports the new third grade unit, Weather and Climate, and provides a weather station and associated software technology for each school in our District housing a third grade. The weather stations will provide real world data that can be used in mathematics units on measurement and graphing/data analysis, allowing a true STEM approach to learning in this area. Students will organize and use data to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season. They will also learn about weather-related hazards and understand the merits of design solutions that reduce the impact of such hazards.

GrowLab II, Two-Tiered Indoor Garden

This grant, totaling $28050, supports the new Kindergarten science unit, seventeen (17) Kindergarten classrooms in our District. Indoor gardens will enable students to observe patterns in the natural world over time as well as understand what plants and animals need to survive and the relationship between their needs and where they live. Students will learn that plants are systems, with parts and structures that work together, enabling them to meet their needs in a wide variety of environments.

Digital Design in the Physical World

This grant totals $20,190 and provides funding to 6-12 grade students at CMS, GMS, HSN and HSS. Students have traditionally had the opportunity to design in the digital world of fabricate using traditional methods. Through this grant, students will be able to leverage modern technology fabrication methods to create digitally and fabricate their designs using computer controlled tools with 3D Carving Machines, 3D Printers, and 3D Mini Desktop Printers. Computer courses will leverage the 3-D design software and focus on the design aspects of the project while the engineering courses will focus more directly on the technical operations including support structures and angles of production.

Mind and Body Whole Student Program

This grant, totaling almost $7,000, utilizes heart rate monitors in high school Physical Education classes to provide feedback to students about their physical activity participation during class. The purpose of incorporating heart rate monitors is to gain a greater understanding of high school students’ actual physical activity level (versus perceived activity level) by using a heart rate monitor during physical education class and to determine if an achieved level of physical activity has a positive impact upon overall brain functioning.

This program will involve several curriculum areas, including Math, Health, Physical Education, and Science.

High School Engineering

This grant of $28,000 is our largest to date, and benefits all of our high school students. With this grant, we purchased equipment for a fabrication lab for the new course “Principles of Engineering.” High School South had been without a lab since the construction of the New Theatre in 2007. Our funding allows a consistent experience for students at both high schools and enabled the offering of this popular and important new course.

It is the goal of this course to challenge and engage students through a broad range of engineering topics, including mechanical, structural and, electrical with a focus on computer programming and artificial intelligence. Students will be responsible for the development of advanced computational and robotic systems through the application of computer programs in various languages.

Integrating Math & Computers using Pro-Bots

This grant, totaling almost $17,000, will benefit all fifth grade students in the district. This grant will fund a program utilizing Pro-Bots to integrate mathematics and computer programming. Cleverly disguised as a race car, Pro-Bots offer students an enticing, engaging, and hands-on experience with Logo programming as well as robotic controls. This builds on our successful funding of the mini-maker program for all fourth graders last year.

StarLab – Fall 2012 to Present

The Foundation has proudly funded the StarLab portable planetarium program since its inception in 2012. The portable planetarium, housed in an inflatable gray dome, spends a week at each elementary school during the school year. Every 3rd grade student participates in two interactive classes in the StarLab. In the astronomy segment, the students learn about the changes in the sky during each season, including the position of the sun and constellations. In the language arts component, the students learn about the myths behind the constellations, relating them to the beliefs of many cultures.

This program is extremely popular with both the teachers and the students. We’re currently working with the faculty to see if can extend this program to other grades.

Mini-Makers – 2014 to Present

In the fall of 2014, the Foundation made its largest grant to date to the district. Below is an article that Rebecca McClelland-Crawley wrote about this grant:

Learning with littleBits
Rebecca McLelland-Crawley, Ed.D., NBCT
PRISM Facilitator Community Middle Schoolmini-makerThanks to a substantial grant by the West Windsor-Plainsboro Education Foundation to support STEAM efforts in WW-P, our students are finding ways to invent and think outside of the box. The littleBits, electronic modules that snap together magnetically, have found their way into the hands of 1st through 12th graders. I am currently using the littlebits with my middle school students who serve as Maker Ambassadors to both our school and the upper elementary school next door. Our 4th grade teachers use the littleBits within the existing curriculum to investigate the properties of electricity.Students may build model flashlights, test different materials for conductivity, and create circuits that illustrate concepts of energy transfer, energy conservation, and the conversion or “loss” of energy to heat. The littleBits supplement our existing curriculum, where students investigate circuits, but also support the engineering practices of the Next Generation Science Standards. Danielle Bugge uses the littleBits with her HSS Environmental Science class to develop terrestrial rovers and partners with Lisa Rizziello’s classroom at Hawk to mentor students on ecology and engineering.When Russell Wray and I developed the grant proposal, we wanted to put innovative materials in the hands of the students. We recognized as that there is an ongoing need to foster a collaborative culture of creativity, innovation, and experimentation at a young age to encourage students to become interested and aware of engineering as a potential career field. Now all of our 4th grade teachers have 4 student sets each (4 base kits and 4 premium kits) that they can take out from the Media Center at any time to incorporate in their routine as they see fit. While many of the tinkering activities of littleBits align to our electricity unit, they were not purchased exclusively for this purpose. We want to support our learners with creative tools to expand the way they think about the world. Through the support of our Education Foundation, we are able to inspire a maker mentality in our schools.Rebecca McLelland-Crawley, Ed.D.
PRISM facilitator
Community Middle School