My name is Shana Berry and I am a first-year teacher at Leatherwood Elementary School. I am also a part of the Kinder Krew and I’m very excited to be a KVEC Innovation Grant recipient. Leatherwood Elementary is a small school having around 150 students in total. We are in a rural part of the county which puts our entire school at a disadvantage. Subsequently, this disadvantage gets even worse for my kinder kids. Due to being so isolated, most of my students did not have the opportunity to attend pre-school. The closest pre-school to our school is located at Viper Elementary School. This is quite a long drive for some parents to take their kids and it is a long bus ride for a 4 year old to go on their own by bus. Due to not having a local pre-school, most parents opt not to send their child to pre-school.

Due to the above issues, my kindergarten students are put at a great disadvantage that is very apparent. According to the Brigance, 72.7% of my students are below average in academic and cognitive development and 45.5% are below in language development. To help my students I decided to research with this question in mind: Will the use of at home manipulatives have a positive effect and benefit on students during the Covid-19 pandemic? With this question in mind, Kinder Kits were born. Kinder Kits are kits that will be sent home to all my students and they will be filled with manipulatives that we would use for center times in class. The kits will have materials that will address reading, writing, math, social studies and science. These materials include, draw and write journals, ten frames, print numbers practice book, storytelling lapboards, real bugs discovery kit and good for me rewards. My action plan for this grant is to implement Kinder Kits as soon as possible to students who are participating both in-person and through NTI. Students will actively use these kits every day to complete assignments given to them via video (included example). The grant timeline is 6 months (Oct. – April). Success of my kits will be determined by using an assessment that was recently given to my students in September. The assessment will be given again in March. The data from the two assessments will be compared to show the effectiveness of using the Kinder Kits. We will begin our process as soon as our materials arrive. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Email: [email protected]
Cell Phone: (606) 216-7933
Work Phone: (606) 675-4431