STEMterprise spotlight:  Ms. Piribauer’s grade 3/4 class

Reading time: 3 minutes

One of the great things about Ontario Farming STEMterprise is the opportunity it has given us to connect with teachers and hear how the project works in their classrooms.

We want to share an email update that we received from Ms. Piribauer, a grade 3/4 teacher from OCDSB who is doing the STEMterprise project for the first time this year:

Hi Good in Every Classroom team!
This year I began teaching at a different school and learned about STEMterprise from a colleague who completed the project last year. I was hesitant at first, but through talking more with her and hearing from other educators through the video, my interest grew. 

This year I taught a 3-4 English class. There are only eight grade 4’s, seven of whom were part of the STEMterprise project last year.  It’s been really neat to see the grade 4’s so excited to embark on the project again this year. The grade 3’s are equally as excited partly because of the hype from the grade 4’s.

We began the project in January and we have designated our biggest block of Science in our schedule (60 minutes) to STEMterprise. It also makes its way into Language and Math naturally, but that Science block is our scheduled time each week. It’s been fun to see the students come in and see it on the schedule and hear so many of them say, “Yes, it’s STEMterprise day!” 

The project is straight forward and easy to teach to my students.  I like that all of the resources are created and ready to go.  Some of the lessons are taking us a bit longer than the overview indicates.  I’m ok with it though because my students are engaged and having good discussions about what we are learning. 

Stage 1 – Entrepreneurship

This lesson was our kick off to the project, and taught my students about entrepreneurship.  We enjoyed the read-aloud, discussed what character traits are required to be an entrepreneur, got into our business groups and created our STEM wonder wall.

Stage 2 – Starting a Business.

The highlight so far was the taste test lesson (Stage 2, Lesson 1).  Analyzing the granola bar competition was tons of fun and connected to our data management unit so perfectly.

This past week we worked on business names and logos. This was a really neat experience for me to see the difference between the ideas coming from the grade 4’s versus the 3’s (i.e., business names such as Tasty Energy or Fuel Bites vs Lightning Bolts or Roblox). The experience that the grade 4’s are bringing really allows us to pivot off some of their ideas and stretch the thinking of the grade 3’s.

Early thinking about business logos

We’re looking forward to continuing with our logos this week and then heading into Stage 3 after that!

~ Jessica Piribauer at Maple Ridge Elementary

Thank you, Jessica, for sharing your experience!

We would love to hear your STEMterprise classroom stories! Please consider sharing what is going on in your classroom in this open form survey.  And if you can, please send us pictures to include in future updates (email it to: web@gfo.ca).  

For your effort, we’ll draw one lucky name and email the $250 Amazon gift card on June 30, 2025. Tell your colleagues!