This article describes the integrated Coding, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CSTEM) full-year course that aligns mathematical skill-building and computational thinking while applying them to real-world problems and the ways in which this applies to teaching scientific literacy. Throughout the curriculum, branded as Learning by Making, students design, construct, analyze and explain their own experiments, acquiring and measuring data that are personally relevant yet also critical to the future of our economy and our planet. In this article, we demonstrate the ways that scientific literacy is incorporated into our curriculum through the development of foundational skills in coding, electronics and experimental design. Supported by the US Department of Education since 2013, the curriculum serves ninth graders in high-need rural High Schools. Teaching these students the foundations of science literacy is important because rural schools often lack the access to technology and are under-resourced. The curriculum focuses on teaching skills over information, as with the increased availability of information due to globalization and the internet, it is more important to teach students how to find information and how to create their own experiments, rather than simply handing them the accumulated knowledge of humanity one step at a time.