How could you use $250?
click for mini-grant application
Four grants are awarded each January. Applications can be submitted any time of year. They are due by December 15 for consideration for that year. Click here for a PDF of the application. The application can be mailed or emailed. The application can be downloaded to your computer, opened with the Adobe Acrobat App and completed using the Fill and Sign tool.
2022 Mini Grant Award Winners
Jeannette Alday, Principal Pioneer Elementary School, NHUSD
Pioneer Elementary has a Sensory Room to help students. She used her ACRA Mini Grant funds to buy sensory books for that room.
Cathy Day, 4th Grade Teacher, Emanuele Elementary, NHUSD
Thank you for my ACRA mini-grant. I started something called a "first chapter free preview" where I would use my read aloud time to read the first few pages of a new book. Rather than continuing the next day, I would tell my students that if they wanted to continue they could get the book from the library (or a similar one from the same series) to use during independent reading. Immediately, the interest in independent reading went up! Something I noticed immediately with these more modern books as I read them aloud was that the updates were about far more than just representation-- the situations, the characters, the settings and backstories, and even the language used all just felt more relevant and authentic to my students. This classroom library refresh was much needed and I thank you and the ACRA team for your support in my classroom!
Vanessa Leong, 5th Grade Teacher, Amador Elementary, Dublin USD
Vanessa used her ACRA Mini Grant funds to add books and games to her classroom library that will help her students improve their life skills, communication skills and conflict negotiation skills.
2021 Mini Grant Award Winners
Jeannette Alday, Victoria Aqcaoili and Rachelle Bautista:
Jeannette is the Principal for Pioneer Elementary School in New Haven. Both Ms. Bautista and Ms. Agcaoili support the special education population. Ms. Bautista teaches the mild to moderate classroom, grades 2-3, and Ms. Agcaoili teaches a mild to moderate classroom, grades 4-5. Both collaborate weekly to support the needs of the special education program.
They plan to purchase books that can be used as read alouds and literacy tools to develop a child’s understanding of feelings and how to articulate their needs. SDC teachers will use books in literacy lessons on character development, character traits, social stories, as well as embedding lessons on comprehension, decoding, and balance literacy skills.
Kathy Langham with Adam Tam
Kathy is a retired 5th grade teacher and Elementary Principal who taught in New Haven for 22 years. Adam Tan is a Junior at Irvington High School and is working on becoming an Eagle Scout. Adam talked with the principal of their local school, Harvey Green Elementary, and she suggested he build a Little Library and place it on the school campus. Adam is in the process of finding donations to support his project. Our mini-grant will help him reach his goal of providing a Little Library for the community. Anyone can take a book from the library. They can keep the book, return it and get another one and/or donate books to the library. Little Libraries are an excellent way to involve the community in increasing people’s access to books.
Colleen Sill
Colleen is a 5th grade teacher at Amador Elementary School in the Dublin Unified School District. She has started a “calming corner” in her room that students can access just to take a break and breathe. She wants to add short story books for students to read about feeling and regulating their feelings, especially a section of books on social emotional wellness. She also wants to add books on diversity as well as books whose main character is an underrepresented minority to the classroom library.
Vanessa Leong
Vanessa Leong is also a 5th grade teacher at Amador Elementary in the Dublin Unified School District. She wants to incorporate multicultural, diverse books about equality, equity and emotions into her classroom library. She wants her classroom library to contain appropriate literature that can reach out to students to help them to gain acceptance, understanding of others and themselves in order to foster a safe learning environment. Her requests are for books on a wide variety of reading levels including fiction and nonfiction titles.
We wish all our mini-grant winners the very best in their efforts to promote literacy and the love of reading.