STEM's Siddhi Singh moves on to the Colorado State Spelling Bee Finals
STEM's Science Olympiad Team competes at the Southern Regionals
Last weekend Mr. Jeff Reinkensmeyer and Mrs. Kathy Dweyer took Middle and High School students of the STEM Science Olympiad Teams to compete in the Southern Regionals at CSU Pueblo. The team did fantastic, winning several medals and placing third overall, which qualifies us for State, which will be on April 2 at UCCS. Training will start on March 8, with a pizza party celebration, goal setting, and training.
Team members who competed, include: 9th graders Anthony Sagrati and Harman Saron, 8th graders Vicente Pavon and Siddhi Singh, 7th graders Cara Hubbard, Kevin Bogan, Tamanna Chollampat, Addley Szczekocki, 6th graders Anna Marie Boyd, Nikita Pillai, and Morgan Hamm. The team finished in the top 5 in 16 of 22 events.
Students who medaled:
- Anatomy and Physiology 3rd Cara Hubbard and Siddhi Singh
- BioProcess Lab 3rd Cara Hubbard and Siddhi Singh
- Crimebusters 3rd Morgan Hamm and Addley Szczekocki
- Dynamic Planet 3rd Vicente Pavon and Kevin Bogan
- Food Science 2nd Addley Szczekocki and Anna Marie Boyd
- Ornithology 3rd Kevin Bogan
- Rocks and Minerals 3rd Kevin Bogan
- Solar System 3rd Vicente Pavon and Nikita Pillai
- Write It Do It 3rd Morgan Hamm and Addley Szczekocki
STEM parents, board members and staff pitch in for National Reading Across America Week
In addition to our celebrity guest readers for National Reading Across America Week, we also had some familiar faces at STEM pitch in to read to the kids. Thank you to STEM parents and board members Kelly Reyna and Carla Gustafson for reading books to our students Friday along with STEM parent and regular volunteer Mona Loptien for also reading to our kindergartners. STEM teachers like Ms. Bench also took time to read to the kids. It was a very successful and fun week!
STEM is hiring! Check out the new promo for STEM's employment page
Deputy Gabe gives wildly entertaining presentation of 'A book without pictures' to STEM's 2nd graders
Big turnout for STEM's Career Discovery Night
A big turnout this week for STEM’s Career Discovery Night! About 75 parents and students turned out in the high school cafeteria to learn more about our unique program that gives STEM students direct access to the real world through our industry partnerships, mentorships and internships. For more information about the program, check out STEM’s Career Discovery webpage.
STEM 2nd graders dress up as famous historical characters for biography unit
We’re thinking you are going to love this photo gallery from Thursday in the elementary school cafeteria! Ms. Slater’s 2nd grade class presented their ‘interactive biography unit’ to parents. Leading up to the presentation, the students studied their characters and came up with some amazingly creative costumes and designs to accurately portray their character. What a fun assignment!
STEM student wants to be exactly like her teacher for her future career
As part of our Spirit Week, students dressed up as their ‘future career’. Well, it looks like Laiklyn is set to become a teacher for her future career and not just any teacher, but Addison Bohnsack! Laiklyn decided to dress exactly like her teacher Ms. Bohnsack. Don’t they look like a perfect pair?!
CBS Denver Journalists read to STEM kids
National Reading Across America Week continued all week long at STEM and a special thanks to Mekialaya White, morning anchor at CBS Denver for volunteering to read ‘The Poky Little Puppy’ to a group of our lucky Kindergartners and also CBS Denver Reporter Kati Weis for reading ‘The Cool Bean’. Mekialaya also showed off her dog to the class via Zoom and answered a lot of questions about working in television. Kati did the same. Our students love the guest readers!
Former 9news Executive Producer Jack Maher, father of STEM Communications Manager Jeff Maher, reads to STEM 3rd graders
A special thanks to Jack Maher for visiting STEM and reading to some of our third graders for National Read Across America Week! Jack read one of his favorite children’s books, ‘King Midas and his gold’.
Jack spent more than 40 years working in television as an Anchor, Multimedia Journalist and Executive Producer at 9news and was also an expert storyteller for Jeffco Public Schools. He’s also the father of Jeff Maher, who works as STEM’s Communications Manager and is also a former Anchor and Multimedia Journalist.
Jack showed the class feature stories that he put together when he worked at Jeffco, including a story about a boy battling cancer who got to be an astronaut for a day and another about a group of students who go to school on a farm in rural Colorado. He also showed them a cartoon and music video he created recently. The student’s loved Jack’s presentation from start to finish and also had a lot of great questions!
STEM's Battle of The Books team makes it to the finals
Congratulations to our 5th grade Battle of The Books team! They won the semifinal battle Monday night and faced off in the finals Wednesday. Battle of the Books isn’t easy! Teams read ten novels. During a battle the official reads a statement or quote from one of the books. The team has only 60 seconds to discuss and decide which book it came from and correctly name the author. The STEM team consists of: Abhilasha Acharya, Akshatha Ambalavanan, Yash Aradhya, Delilah Feltcher, Sahindu Munasinghe and Shelby Whiteley.
Douglas County law enforcement support STEM for National Read Across America Week
Our first day of Reading Across America Week on Monday was a success! Our kids were so excited for the special guest readers including Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock, Chief Steve Johnson and Einar Jensen with South Metro Fire Rescue. Thank you all for supporting our students!
Fun costumes at STEM for Spirit Week
Spirit Week at STEM! We had a lot of fun with the day dedicated to ‘dress as your favorite book character’. We have Mary Poppins, Pippy Longstocking, Waldo, Pig the Pug and many more! Thank you STEM staff for dressing up and getting in the spirit of National Read Across America Week!
STEM students compete in TSA State Conference
Last weekend, over 100 middle and high school STEM students participated in the Colorado TSA State Conference in a variety of competitions such as Catapult, Career Prep, Biotechnology, Animatronics, Dragster, Board Game Design and many more. Our students represented us well, showing kindness to each other and other schools, and competing with integrity. In the end, STEM received 21 medals in middle school and 19 medals in high school. We are so proud of our Spartans!
STEM building renovation enters new phase
It’s all coming together! Check out the progress on our building renovation project at STEM. A huge section of the wall of the new expansion was added today. The wall will be part of a new middle school cafeteria and new classrooms upstairs.
STEM is about to look entirely different!
Wow! Some heavy duty work captured on video this week from the big crane working on STEM’s Building Renovation Project. By the way, the slimmest section of wall the crane has been lifting this week is 37,000 pounds!
ACEC Colorado Foundation and Students building solutions
How do we build the infrastructure to support self-driving cars that serve the diverse needs of rural and urban communities?
ACEC Colorado Foundation (American Council of Engineering Companies of Colorado Scholarship & Education Foundation) and Ms. Basu’s and Ms. Hart’s Middle School students are designing solutions in order to learn about the application of multiple engineering disciplines. We are so thankful to ACEC Mentors who are visiting their classes every week and students are having an experiential learning adventure.
Students are researching the topics, meeting with mentors, maintaining a collaborative portfolio of findings or results, and creating solutions. Solutions designed by students will be shared locally and regionally. Teams are also working on creating video or YouTube or use other multimedia submissions that describes the process, products and learning by the team. Students are learning about project management, teamwork, systems thinking, and other real-world problem-solving skills.
Thank you to ACEC mentors, Ms, Basu, Ms. Hart, and Dr. Cannady for giving students this amazing opportunity. We can’t wait to see their designs and solutions.
