STE GENEVIEVE — This past summer, the Ste. Genevieve County R-II School District received a $5,000 America’s Farmers Grow Communities donation from Bayer Fund, on behalf of Ste. Genevieve County local farmer Adrian R. “Bob” Breig.
Breig chose SG R-II’s STEM program as the recipient for this funding with the purpose of enhancing STEM learning for our students. STEM is an interdisciplinary approach where students investigate and engineer solutions to problems. STEM opportunities are integrated into curriculum pre-k through 12, as well as into extracurricular offerings. These programs focus on how STEM concepts, coding, robotics, industrial technology, design, and engineering and fabrication courses can build upon one another and transition students from one level to the next.
All four schools were able to purchase STEM-related equipment and activities to bolster their programming.
Recently, the Ste. Genevieve Elementary School third grade POWER group purchased kits using a portion of the funds from the STEM grant. Students in this group are from each of the third grade classes, and they will learn how to build a robot from scratch! They will then learn to program these robots using a block coding program.
Through these types of STEM projects, students learn how to construct evidence-based solutions to real-world problems, and they later apply these skills in their chosen career pathways. R-II educators are excited about having the opportunity to expand their STEM programming through this generous grant.