D51 students honored for winning STEM competition

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KJCT) - A few District 51 students are being recognized for winning a paper bridge building competition. The students competed earlier this month in a STEM Day Contest that asked groups of 3-5 students to build paper beam bridges that can hold a stack of books using no more than five sheets of paper and five inches of tape.

The winners are part of Caroline Morrison’s class at Grand Mesa Middle School. Her students built a paper bridge that held 64 lbs. “They did, I think, develop some great engineering skills,” Morrison explains. “And I told them that if they come up with a design and it failed to try again. And so, they kept trying to get better and better to learn upon it.”

Groups sent pictures of their bridges to the D51 STEM Coordinator and winners were selected at the elementary, middle school, and high school level based on whose bridges could hold the most weight in books.