Murray Moments

Hillcrest Jr. High PE Teacher Missy Rose leveraged funding from MEF to purchase an Ultimania activity set for her classes. Ultimania is a fun and inclusive team game that is played much like the sport of Ultimate Frisbee.

Teams work together to advance their ball down the play area and throw it through the 36” dia goal. Players can only have possession for 10 seconds before passing or attempting to score; any longer and possession goes to the other team! Along with physical activity, games like Ultimania teach students teamwork and rapid decision-making – a perfect complement to important academic and life skills.

MEF partners with the community to fund educator grants that help students grow. If your business would like to sponsor with MEF, bringing to life a love for learning with Murray kids, contact Doug Perry at 801-264-7400.

Liberty Elementary 2nd Grade Teacher Laura Maxfield sought enhanced ways to help her students learn place value concepts and other basic math. So she submitted a MEF grant request for large magnetic dry-erase number lines for her whiteboard and individual ones for student desks.

She reports that the kids love dry-erase products, and their sustainability (compared to paper) is also a win. Games are also a great way to learn and practice math concepts. Students can work with peers to see numbers in new ways (through expanded forms, base ten pictures, and ten frames) while playing various math card games.

MEF partners with the community to fund educator grants that help students grow. If your business would like to sponsor with MEF, bringing to life a love for learning with Murray kids, contact Doug Perry at 801-264-7400.

Hillcrest Jr. High History Teacher Gabriel Smith needed a closeup, hands-on, durable solution for teaching geography. So, he requested funds for heavy laminated maps that could be located on each student’s desk. 

While he admits he already had maps all over the room, this grant funding gave his students something kinesthetic they could use to pinpoint locations of word events. They also learn about latitude and longitude better, tracing these with their fingers.

MEF partners with the community to fund educator grants that help students grow. If your business would like to sponsor with MEF, bringing to life a love for learning with Murray kids, contact Doug Perry at 801-264-7400.

First Grade Viewmont Teacher Jen Lightfoot, needed a slick way to help kids discover patterns in words while getting extra spelling practice in.

Students love it when teachers give them hands-on learning opportunities to use their So, she approached Murray Education Foundation (MEF) for a grant to purchase alphabet sets for each student in her class. A bonus is that they have been instrumental for one student beginning to learn English, who just moved here from another country.

The sets are easy to store and a perfect solution to a simple problem that optimizes learning with engaging materials. As Jen sums up perfectly, “When learning is fun, we can get the hard work done!”

MEF partners with the community to fund educator grants that help students grow. If your business would like to sponsor with MEF, bringing to life a love for learning with Murray kids, contact Doug Perry at 801-264-7400.

Liberty Elementary Theater Teacher Bryn Swain needed some simple tools that would allow her students to create “Informances” (small in-class performances) so that parents could see what their students are working on in theater class. This hands-on project is important to MCSD’s core curriculum, which tasks students with creating a performance that shows things they learned.

For example, with her second-grade class, she had students perform The Sneetches. Her students orchestrated another informance called Click Clack Moo Cows. Tools needed for this are some camera equipment, screens, and lighting.

Students love it when teachers give them hands-on learning opportunities to use their imagination, collaborate, and experiment with the creative process. Pair that with literary, math, or other academic lessons, and you have a powerful learning experience that is engaging and memorable for each student.

=====
MEF partners with the community to fund educator grants that help students grow. If your business would like to sponsor with MEF, bringing to life a love for learning with Murray kids, contact Doug Perry at 801-264-7400.