Grants Overview
BANK OF COLORADO INNOVATION AWARD
The Bank of Colorado Education Innovation Award is a coveted grant given to the Durango 9R teacher or school proposing the most promising and innovative program; the award is administered by the Durango Education Foundation.
FEATURED PAST AWARDS
21ST CENTURY WRITING FLUENCY
If you are seven, and brimming full of ideas, but you don’t exactly remember how to form your letters or where to put the comma or how to spell the vocabulary you’ve mastered orally, how are you to tackle that important report on, say, the Underground Railway?
This program combines speech recognition technology, SMARTboard capabilities, and collaborative student learning to enable students to work together on research projects, develop strong writing habits and fuse their oral articulation with their writing.
The program was initiated last year for a small group of students by (now retired) teacher Melissa Vance. It is being implemented this year as a whole-classroom pilot by 2nd grade teacher Lori Smith.
WHAT'S DIFFERENT ABOUT...
Animas Valley Elementary School and Kelly Von Stroh received the award for the program, "What's Different About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners." Throughout the year, Kelly brought this program to 75 teachers, who in turn delivered it to others at their schools. In all, we estimate that more than 2000 students were touched by this method in one year alone.
SCIENCE LAB
In 2013, the inaugural award was given to Riverview Elementary School, for their innovative all-school science lab. Every child at Riverview does an intensive 6-week study in the lab, learning about everything from indigenous species to weighing matter with liquid displacement.