Writing clearly and considering another person’s point of view are skills students can carry into every subject and beyond the classroom.
At Spring Forest Middle School (SFMS), two projects receiving 2026 J. Landon Short Mini Grants for Educators focus on helping students grow as writers, readers and thinkers.
Congratulations to the following grant recipients:
Grant recipient(s) | Project |
|---|---|
Kimberly Murphy | From Sentence to Structure: Building Confident Expository Writers |
Stephanie Haack, with fellow sixth-grade ELA team members Stephanie Houston, Francis Sujack and Cecilee Davis | Examining Perspective Through Literacy |
Murphy’s From Sentence to Structure: Building Confident Expository Writers focuses on helping students explain their ideas with clarity and purpose. From crafting a sentence to organizing a complete piece of writing, developing these skills gives students a foundation for sharing information and demonstrating what they know.
The project’s emphasis on confidence recognizes an important part of writing: helping students see themselves as capable communicators whose ideas are worth developing and sharing.
Through Examining Perspective Through Literacy, Haack and the sixth-grade English language arts team focus on the opportunities reading provides to consider different experiences and viewpoints. Examining perspective encourages students to look closely at a text, discuss their interpretations and support their thinking with evidence.
Together, these projects connect reading and writing with student voice. They highlight how literacy helps students understand others while developing the skills to express their own ideas.
Made possible through generous community support, the J. Landon Short Mini Grants for Educators help turn creative ideas into meaningful classroom experiences. It’s #CollectiveGreatness in action.
You can help make great things happen for kids, too. Visit SBISD’s Engage page to learn how to support students, classrooms and schools.