MEF Round 45 Grants – April, 2025

Return to Awarded Grants Directory…

Round 45 Grants – April, 2025

Owl Bet You Can’t Guess What We Found
The purpose is to educate the students using hands-on activities about owls, to examine their roles in nature by dissecting owl pellets. Students will also learn how owls have acquired physical and behavioral adaptations to be successful in their environments. Dissecting owl pellets will provide hands-on information about owls’ food preferences and their role in nature. Students will also learn about how learning about and encountering owls in the wild increases our awareness and appreciation for them and their nocturnal lifestyle. Analyzing and graphing the data will help the students understand and visualize data, patterns, and relationships, making complex information easier to comprehend and use for decision-making, both in school and in everyday life. Students will be able to remember this learning activity from that day forward with their resin bone exhibit. Thank you for this opportunity to provide a lifelong memory for the students.
Leilani Pierce, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grade 6, 60 student.
Martial Arts Mentoring
This will be a two hour after-school program that teaches martial arts, as well as life skills to 40 of our “at-risk” students at Iddings Elementary. The purpose of the program is to help modify bad behavior by teaching life lessons such as self-control, focus, confidence, and courage. The program will strengthen students’ mind and body, as well as improve students’ coordination. Once a week, we will give martial arts instruction, spar, and then circle up and learn about various life skills.
Ivan Ursery II, Iddings Elementary School, Grades K-4, 40 students.
Expanding Horizons: Building a Diverse and Engaging Library Collection
This project will expand the school library’s collection to include a wider variety of books for students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. By purchasing diverse materials that represent different cultures, subjects, and interests, this project will foster a love for reading, improve literacy skills, and support academic growth across all grade levels. With books that cater to a wide range of interests, from STEM to multicultural literature, students will have the resources they need to explore, learn, and grow. This project directly aligns with MCSC goals by enhancing literacy and supporting curriculum standards across various disciplines. Expanding Horizons: Building a Diverse and Engaging Library Collection This project will expand the school library’s collection to include a wider variety of books for students in Kindergarten through 12th grade. By purchasing diverse materials that represent different cultures, subjects, and interests, this project will foster a love for reading, improve literacy skills, and support academic growth across all grade levels. With books that cater to a wide range of interests, from STEM to multicultural literature, students will have the resources they need to explore, learn, and grow. This project directly aligns with MCSC goals by enhancing literacy and supporting curriculum standards across various disciplines.
Nakisha Brown, MCSC, Grades K-12, 1000 students.
Read, Perform, Inspire: Bringing Stories to Life with Reader’s Theater
This grant seeks funding to implement a Reader’s Theatre program in classrooms to enhance literacy, comprehension, and public speaking skills. Through this program, students will engage in dramatized reading activities that promote fluency, confidence, and collaboration. Funding will be used to acquire scripts, instructional materials, and classroom resources to facilitate effective implementation.
Kristina Carden, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grade 5, 30+ students.
Grow With Us: The HS greenhouse is an amazing place for students to grow
Many students ask what is growing in there and are exposed to plants they might not otherwise know. Some unique plants are featured and even named (given cute ‘dating profile’ info blurbs). The water setup currently leaks a lot, and it would be nice to replace this. Thanks for the consideration!
Heather Oaks, Merrillville High School, Biology/Home Ec, 20 students.
Smart Robotics and Interactive Systems
This project focuses on integrating microcontrollers with sensors, actuators, and coding to develop various interactive and automated systems. Students will engage in hands-on activities such as building robots, designing smart home devices with sensors, creating programmable toys, constructing electronic circuits, and coding RGB lighting systems. The primary goal is to enhance students’ understanding of embedded systems, coding logic, and circuit design while fostering creativity and problem-solving skills through practical applications in robotics and automation.
David King, Pierce Middle School, Grade 7, 50 students.
Save EggBert!
This is a classic egg drop experiment. Students will try to build a structure that will prevent a fragile egg from breaking when dropped from a significant height. Students will think about creating a design that would reduce the amount of energy transferred from potential to kinetic energy on the egg shell. Students will demonstrate curiosity and show inventiveness, brainstorm in a team to generate ideas, and use problem-solving strategies in building simple structures. Students will also find enjoyment in exhibiting their projects for their peers and other educators. The goal is to create a fun, researched based activity to encourage student interest in science, and strengthen their 6th grade Science standards knowledge. The goal is to complete this project every year for their trimester 1 project.
Leilani Pierce, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grades 5-6, 70 students.
Jumping into Learning with Science of Reading Enriched Materials
This grant involves students being equipped to tackle phonemic awareness skills while reading and writing. Without properly learning how to successfully put into action phonological / phonemic awareness skills such as blending phonemes, substituting phonemes, deleting phonemes, and identifying rhymes, our students on a local and national level will forever be in the “at risk of failing” category. The child’s self-esteem and attitude towards school overall are drastically impacted in such a way that the child “checks out” and gives up. With hands-on learning tools students will stay actively engaged in learning all while having fun!
Monique Warren, Iddings Elementary School, Grade 1, 87 students.
SHUT the BOX, Learning tool for helping with Problem Solving
Shut the Box learning games help assist teachers in the classroom with fun and engaging ways that help students become more successful with their problem solving skills. This proposal seeks funding to develop and implement educational games designed to enhance students’ problem-solving abilities and arithmetic skills. These interactive games will provide engaging, adaptive learning experiences for our students, helping to reinforce fundamental mathematical concepts while promoting critical thinking and analytical reasoning.
Michelle Hinkel, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grade 5, 45 students.
Survive the Tsunami! Save My Home!
Survive the Tsunami! Save My Home! Students will participate in building a mockup of a tsunami environment and homes made from different materials to answer the question which building material will help homes survive tsunamis the best. Students will learn that no one can stop tsunamis from forming since we cannot prevent earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides, but we can devise ways to minimize the impact of these killer waves on human communities. Engineers design and install seismographs, tide gauges, ocean floor pressure sensors and loud sirens. Engineers also design buildings using materials and shapes that are more likely to survive a tsunami. The purpose of this project is to strengthen student engineering, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills. Students will use this activity to visually see the damage tsunamis can make and how the movement of waves continues to move unless something is in their way to stop it. This experiment will be a staple for trimester 2 students each year. Students will participate in learning science in a hands-on environment and will be counted on to Save My Home.
Leilani Pierce, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grade 6, 70 students.
Learning through Gaming
Learning through Gaming is a project designed to use board and card games to help students learn how to interact with each other. They will learn how to work together and how to have a conversation with each other. We will use the games to develop interpersonal relationship skills that students need to be effective students, employees and well-rounded individuals.
Laura Stoner, Merrillville High School, Grades 9-12, 150-200 students.
Secret Stories to Help with Learning
The Secret Stories to Help Learning project focuses on teaching phonics through engaging activities and assessments. Students begin with basic phonics patterns and gradually progress to more complex concepts like digraphs and multisyllabic words. Activities include daily observations, phonics journals, and interactive games, while formal assessments like weekly spelling tests and reading fluency passages measure progress. Weekly word work and formative assessments track growth, aiming to help students confidently apply phonics rules in reading and writing, improving fluency, word recognition, and spelling accuracy.
Rose Matthews, Salk Elementary School, Grade 3, 25 students.
MHS Robotics Team Reaching Out for STEM Success
The title of this grant is “MHS Robotics Team Reaching Out for STEM Success”. The title of this comes from the parts that the robotics team is requesting which allows the robot to reach out past its frame and pick-up, use and/or move the components in the FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics competitions. Every year the robot design includes some mechanism that reaches out past the parameters of the wheel base, whether its reaching up or out in front of the robot. The robotics team has had success designing parts with current inventory, but at this past year’s state competition, they realized their components are out of date and need to be upgraded. This grant will allow the team to be more efficient with their design and be even more competitive if they were to make it to the State championship again. The purpose of this project is to help improve STEM concepts to include more efficient designs to accommodate the programming. Robotics is all about STEM improvement and design challenges. This grant will allow improvement in all phases of the design concept.
Joseph Hussey, Merrillville High School, Grades 10-12, 12 students.
Threaded Thoughts
Threaded Thoughts is a biweekly crochet club designed to empower 10–12-year-old students through the art of fiber crafting, self-reflection, and community. Over 20 weeks, students will build confidence, develop fine motor and math skills, and explore social-emotional growth in a supportive, creative space. With each stitch, students learn to manage frustration, celebrate progress, and create meaningful items—ultimately strengthening their sense of identity and connection to others.
Danielle Shomer, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grades 5-6, 20 students.
Engaging with American History Through Informative Magazines
The use of Kids Discover American History social studies magazine sets offers an enriching educational experience for students by combining striking photographs, informative illustrations, and compelling nonfiction narratives. This magazine format will not only captivate students’ interest but will also serve as a versatile tool for enhancing cross-curricular connections, particularly in English Language Arts (ELA) through the exploration of various text features. With a total of approximately ninety students in social studies per team, these engaging materials are instrumental in supporting our MCSC goals, particularly in improving i-Learn scores in both ELA and Social Studies. By integrating these resources, I aim to reach our MIS goal, which ensure that at least 70% of our students achieve on or above grade level in the upcoming Spring I-Ready Diagnostic test, thereby fostering a deeper understanding of American history while promoting academic excellence across subjects.
Dayna Bacon, Merrillville Intermediate School, Grade 5, 90 students.
Essential Skills STEM
This project is designed to give my students meaningful, hands-on experiences with STEM that meet them right where they are. In our Essential Skills classroom, most of my students need simple, engaging ways to interact with the world around them. Through building with blocks and simple machines, exploring textures, sorting snacks, measuring, and using calming tools, they’ll practice early math and science skills in a way that’s fun, functional, and tailored to their needs. My goal is to create opportunities where learning feels exciting, calming, and achievable. This project will help each student grow in confidence, independence, and curiosity.
Roland Nightengale, Salk Elementary School, Grades K-4, 30 students.
Romeo and Juliet Vlog
As part of our unit on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, students are given a choice chart to demonstrate their understanding of the text. Three of the options (Video, Soundtrack, and Vlog) would benefit from these supplies. For Video, students have the option to recreate a section of the play. They can use whatever costuming and scenery they would like. They can choose to use the original text or update it with modern language. For Soundtrack, students choose a soundtrack to accompany the scene we read in class. They must provide a written rational for their choices. For Vlog, students are to take on the persona of a character within the play and create a Vlog. They can choose to do a “Get Ready with Me”-style blog or another version.
Rachel Dokich, Pierce Middle School, Grade 8, 60 students.
Sensory Learning Environment for Student Development
This grant proposal request funding of $5,000 to establish a comprehensive Essential Skills Sensory Room at Merrillville Community School Corporation. The proposed facility will create an innovative learning environment that supports student emotional regulation, social skills development, and sensory integration through evidence-based design and equipment for all three Essential Skills classroom. Students across our district require dedicated spaces that support sensory processing, emotional regulation, and essential life skills development. Current facilities lack specialized environments where students can safely practice social skills, engage in sensory integration activities, and learn self-regulation strategies.
Khameice Jones, Salk Elementary School, Grades K-4, 30 students.
MHS Fall Play
The annual MHS Fall Play provides students with multiple opportunities to engage with the performing arts. Whether as performers, designers, or stage crew, MHS students will have firsthand experience of what it takes to bring a script to life from conceptualization all the way to realization. Along the way each student will develop specific techniques and skills necessary for their area of aptitude, thereby developing into highly trained team members that can contribute to this production, future productions, and other future endeavors. The MEF Grant will help cover the necessary costs for the production, giving all students the best possible production experience.
Tom Mackey, Merrillville High School, Grades 9-12, 50 students.
Building Kindergarten Language, Vocabulary and Sounds
The Building Kindergarten Language, Vocabulary and Sounds grant will include activities specifically used for building vocabulary, language and sounds. These activities include early language activity boxes, two different kits based on the Science of Reading for vocabulary and phonological awareness, reading skills folder games and splash learn games which include multiple skills to help with reading success. These activities include all the necessary skills that need to be mastered in kindergarten. These activities are hands on and engaging for students, which are essential for kindergarten.
Michelle Frey, Salk Elementary School, Grade K, 80 students.

TOTAL ROUND 45 GRANTS: $8,245.24

Return to Awarded Grants Directory…

MEF Round 45 Grants – April, 2025

All Awarded Grants