Grant Recipients
 
OUTWARD INGERSOLL

 

Outward Ingersoll is a high interest outdoor interdisciplinary unit developed in the spring of 1997 by eighth grade staff members at Ingersoll Middle School in Canton, Illinois. The mission of Outward Ingersoll is to promote teamwork, problem-solving and model good stewardship of the environment. All Ingersoll Middle School eighth graders (210) benefit from this 3 day outdoor educational program which provides ten exciting, hands-on learning stations. The 10 stations are:

First Aid Trees
Leather Works/Crafts Senses
COPE/Initiative Course Pond Investigation
Wildflowers/Tracks Canoes/Water Safety
Mapping/Orienteering Streams

*Goals and objectives of Outward Ingersoll:

-Promote environmental stewardship for the students, parents and community volunteers. We
promote zero-waste lunches and recycle all waste.
-Provide authentic outdoor education for the students.
-Engage students in hands-on learning activities at 10 activity stations.
-Encourage parent involvement with the students and outdoor education.
-Utilize community resource people at the learning stations and extra programs.

We feel Outward Ingersoll has a significant influence on the students' appreciation of nature. Each
Hands-on learning station is designed to improve the students' knowledge and enjoyment of the environment. At the pond station students catch and identify water "critters" and test for water quality. The stream station provides students with first hand knowledge of water erosion as they measure and figure the rate of flow for the stream. The tracks and wildflowers station teaches students to be aware of and respect wildlife as they quietly hike along a wooded path. The tree station provides students with knowledge to identify and determine the age of trees. The first aid station practices techniques that are useful in an accident or emergency situation. At the orienteering station students practice using a compass to follow a map.

Throughout the 3 day program, environmental stewardship is encouraged through the use of zero waste lunches, recycling aluminum soda cans, providing snacks with zero package waste and the clean-up of all activity sites at the end of each day. We hope the students will continue to model these behaviors in their daily lives. Many adults from the Canton community volunteer their time to help at the different stations. The students develop relationships with teachers and community members that break down barriers. These relationships will influence the behaviors of students in the community in a positive way.
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ACCELERATED READER PROGRAM

 

Two years ago Ingersoll Middle School, grades five through eight, instituted "Accelerated Reader" (AR) to encourage students' independent reading, the main component of improved reading comprehension. In this program, a student reads a book and takes a short quiz on it, thereby earning "points" based upon his level of success, the difficulty level of the book, the length of the book, and his individualized reading goal. Language arts teachers provide thirty minutes of reading time per day and oversee book choice and appropriateness based on reading levels and personal interests. During each of these first two years, students have read many times what they read by choice prior to the inception of AR. Previously, teachers had to push most students to read one book per quarter and report on it, and then the teachers tried to sort out the real reports from the "faked" reports. For promoting reading and personal reading growth, it was hopeless. The AR approach, overseen by language arts teachers who keep themselves updated on middle grade books, finds students reading many books per quarter-and actually liking it.

The school rewards AR progress by announcing names of students who reach one hundred points, having them sign and date a hundred-point poster in the main hallway, and posting pictures of students who earn multiples of one hundred points. With the Sunshine grant, students who reach one hundred points or multiples thereof would also be rewarded with a book.

Sunshine money would purchase approximately two hundred fifty paperback novels, selected for their literary quality and enjoyment levels by language arts teachers, from which a hundred-point student would choose one for his own. Selections would be made from Newbery Award winners, Rebecca Caudill nominations, New York Times selections, "hot titles" among the students, or other respected sources. School book clubs such as The Trumpet Club and Scholastic Books offer many such titles in the $2.95 to $4.95 price range; Scholastic has a book fair warehouse sale near Canton at 50% off book fair prices. Teachers are used to looking for "real deals" on quality materials.

As of Feb. 28, 2002, one hundred eight students have already reached 100 points or multiples of 100 points this school year, two hundred sixty-eight have over fifty. Based upon the hypothesis that half of those "fifty-pointers" reach their hundred by year's end, roughly two hundred fifty books would have been needed to fulfill such prizes this year. The receipt of this grant would allow this school to further encourage personal reading by giving a book to that many students next year. This project, however, does have a downside: it is possible that some students might read more-just so they can get a book-and we might run out of books. We can only hope.

A few years ago, Ingersoll Middle School was struggling to find ways of promoting reading in the building. Our main goal was to create an "atmosphere of reading" which would help students develop a love for reading and to show improvement on achievement test scores in the area of reading. As one strategy, the faculty and administration collaborated to recommend the purchase of the Accelerated Reader software program. In a nutshell, this program works by having students take computerized comprehension tests on books they have completed. Students are awarded points when they pass a quiz based on the book's difficulty and length. The software tracks a student's progress of tests taken and points accumulated. Schools can design incentive programs to reward students who read and accumulate high numbers of points.

The success of this program at Ingersoll has been outstanding. The best part of our success is that we have not attempted to trick students into reading by offering trinkets for prizes. Student achievement has been gained through a building-wide effort placed on reading and the intrinsic motivation students are experiencing through their success of reading and comprehending books. As the program continues to grow and more students are reading than ever before, we continue to look for other ways to create the "atmosphere for reading" that is our intent of this program.

To work toward this goal, we wish to start placing books in the hands of students. We feel that if a student works hard enough to read and achieve 100 points, for example, that student should be recognized. The recognition should not consist of giving the student a pencil or pizza coupon, but by giving him a book. Our school currently has a population of more that forty percent poverty. Many of our students only get to check out books in the library, but never to win one. By providing a book to a student who has earned points, we will be encouraging reading, and quite possibly, finding a way to motivate more students to read. We simply want to get books into students' hands.

As students begin to own books, we would like to see our program grow. We plan to start a "Book Swap" program where students can bring in their own copies of books and swap them for copies we have stored in a particular location in the building. It is amazing how much a student wants to read a book when it "belongs" to him. Before we can put our plan into action, however, we need to first secure the funds to purchase the collection of high quality books we will use to reward our students.
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