Middle Archives - Newton Schools Foundation

Empowering Emotional Growth

This project will create new “calm down spaces,” enhance an existing one, and integrate Nex Playground in middle school special ed classrooms to support emotional regulation and play-based learning, fostering social and emotional development. The …

Empowering Emotional Growth new

This project will create new "calm down spaces," enhance an existing one, and integrate Nex Playground in middle school special ed classrooms to support emotional regulation and play-based learning, fostering social and emotional development. The calm down space offers a quiet, soothing environment for self-regulation, while the Nex Playground encourages creativity, a physical outlet and social interaction, helping students engage in play-based learning. The calm down space will include posters to guide self-regulation.

Applicant: Maria Citrin

Schools: Brown Middle School

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $595.99

Voices that Teach: Expanding the Memoir, Autobiography, Biography Collection

Voices that Teach: Expanding the Memoir, Autobiography, Biography Collection new

This project expands Oak Hill MS Library’s memoir and auto/biography collection to support class projects, cultural displays, and student access to diverse, real-life stories—fostering empathy, learning, and a love of reading. Expanding the memoir, autobiography, and biography collection at Oak Hill MS Library supports ELA, Civics, Music, and cultural displays. It fosters a joyful, inclusive environment through diverse, real-life stories and aligns with district goals by enriching instruction with culturally responsive, rigorous resources.

Applicant: Jean Stehle

Schools: Oak Hill Middle School

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $2,000.00

Brisk Al Teaching Assistant Pilot

Brisk Al Teaching Assistant Pilot new

This project will be a teacher pilot of an AI teacher assistant program called Brisk AI that supports lesson planning, text leveling, and student feedback. This is a new approach for classroom instruction and curriculum, and one that some teachers in the district have already tried on a one-month trial basis but without professional development support. This would enable teachers to efficiently align their academic tasks to standards and leveled texts that are accessible for students and with tools to give AI-supported student feedback around specific parameters identified by the teacher. We will create a professional learning community and bring people together in August for training and periodically throughout the year to share practices. We will organize a showcase at the end of the year to share work.

Applicant: Gene Roundtree

Schools: Middle Schools and Education Center

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $3,000.00

Reading Materials for Language Acquisition FVR Libraries

Leveled readers, designed for language acquisition, will be purchased to create classroom “FVR” libraries for student use. Stories and leveled readers are created to be tailored to the interest of the middle school learner, and …

Reading Materials for Language Acquisition FVR Libraries new

Leveled readers, designed for language acquisition, will be purchased to create classroom "FVR" libraries for student use. Stories and leveled readers are created to be tailored to the interest of the middle school learner, and they often present topics that elicit spontaneous discussion or laughter. Most Leveled readers are written from the perspective of a student who lives in a country where the target language is spoken. This adventure into the experience of someone from another culture enables students to explore the realities of another person’s culture as well as reflect on their own cultural identities.

Applicant: Joanna Modica

Schools: Oak Hill Middle School

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $1,400.00

Middle School Mathematics Intervention Materials

This project will build off of what we learned with our Nearpod purchase, filling gaps in need for mathematics intervention materials for middle schools. This will ensure equity of student experience across all four schools. …

Middle School Mathematics Intervention Materials

Applicant: Maria Kolbe

Schools: Middle Schools and Education Center

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $3,500.00

Instructional Strategies for Assisting Students with Language-Based Learning Disabilities

Registration for a 2-day summer workshop through the Landmark School for 7 teachers. Attendees will receive training in the following areas: Observations of teachers Data such as grades, iReady/STAR math benchmarks, informal reading screeners and…

Instructional Strategies for Assisting Students with Language-Based Learning Disabilities new

Registration for a 2-day summer workshop through the Landmark School for 7 teachers. Attendees will receive training in the following areas:

Observations of teachers
Data such as grades, iReady/STAR math benchmarks, informal reading screeners and progress monitoring tools, and progress toward IEP goals and objectives
Observations of students in the general education setting

Applicant: Samantha Bracy

Schools: Brown Middle School

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $1,500.00

Book Clubs

Book Clubs new

The grant will provide funding for Book Clubs for 6th grade special education students. This includes headphones and splitters, an Audible membership, and books. The goal is to bolster reading engagement, strengthen comprehension, model fluent reading, and increase test scores. In addition, an Audible membership would allow us to purchase audiobooks and guarantee that popular titles would be available to students.

Applicant: Alyssa Cantwell

Schools: Brown Middle School

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $633.50

Curriculum Design at MAFLA Proficiency Academy

Curriculum Design at MAFLA Proficiency Academy new

Four Teachers representing each Middle School and Language will attend a three-day long Proficiency Academy to work on curriculum at Westfield State University. Guided by the MA World Languages Framework, participants will design a unit of their choice that leads language learners to meeting or exceeding proficiency targets. Participants will analyze examples of proficiency-based units after which they will use the backward design principles to design their own unit of instruction. Attention will be paid to addressing social and emotional wellbeing, social justice, centering student diversity and differentiating for equity within the units.

Applicant: Alison Tarbell

Schools: Middle Schools and Education Center

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $2,680.00

Data-based Proficiency Targets & Assessment

A day of professional development in August for 10 teachers to follow up on DESE grant funded Avant Advance proficiency training and make data based recommendations for proficiency targets based on the 8th grade STAMP 4-S assessment given in June. This is a new approach in that this will be the first time that we have given the STAMP 4S assessment to our 8th graders. It is part of a DESE grant that, among other goals, encourages us to adjust our programming to meet the needs of multilingual learners and to possibly expand our program options to meet the changing needs of the NPS community.

Applicant: Alison Tarbell

Schools: Middle Schools and Education Center

Date Approved: Spring 2025

Amount: $3,233.40

WIN (What I Need) self-regulation spaces

What I Need (WIN) spaces are a trauma-informed, Tier 1 classroom intervention that supports the development of self-regulation and emotional intelligence. This pilot study would include both general and special education classrooms.

WIN (What I Need) self-regulation spaces new

Applicant: Sophia Brion-Meisels

Schools: FA Day Middle School

Date Approved: Fall 2024

Amount: $3,309.89

Near Excellence with NearPod

This grant supports NPS’ District Initiative of using StarMath Diagnostic to plan tiered interventions and use NearPod resources. NearPod is an opportunity to give teachers focus skills, videos, and resources to provide mathematics differentiation, particularly …

Near Excellence with NearPod new

This grant supports NPS' District Initiative of using StarMath Diagnostic to plan tiered interventions and use NearPod resources. NearPod is an opportunity to give teachers focus skills, videos, and resources to provide mathematics differentiation, particularly Tier 2 interventions aligned with the district StarMath Diagnostic. This grant will purchase district-wide access to this resource for the school year, not just for Bigelow Middle School. This will help support students performing below benchmark and provide focused skills practice and preview for each student based on diagnostic performances three times a year.

Applicant: Casey Dolan

Schools: District-wide

Date Approved: Fall 2024

Amount: $1,000

I’m Amazing, Now Where Am I Going?

Career exploration program focused on increasing opportunities for Black, Latinx, and/or low-income students in NPS. It enlists high school students to facilitate middle school students and pairs each high schooler with an adult mentor.

I’m Amazing, Now Where Am I Going?

Applicant: Lisa Gilbert-Smith

Schools: Middle & High Schools

Date Approved: Fall 2024

Amount: $12,240