This year, Seventh Grade students have a wonderful learning opportunity as part of their STEAM curriculum; they are joining other seventh grade students across the US in Project Lead The Way. Mr. Mullen, our HSP Director is the leader for this project.
What is Project Lead the Way?
Project Lead The Way is a curriculum designed to provide students with opportunities, through projects and hands-on learning, to develop skills that are necessary to be successful in many STEM careers. Students will use and develop their critical thinking, teamwork, and creativity skills to apply the design process to complete tasks such as digital modeling, designing and building toys for children with Cerebral Palsy, coding, and building robots that have a function. PLTW is designed to engage each student’s natural curiosity and problem solving and to show them the relevancy of math and science in the real world.
How It Works
Students will be engaging in the Design and Modeling curriculum in the first semester and then the Automation and Robotics curriculum the second semester. In both, students will learn the design process that engineers go through when designing a new product. They will learn about how to draw and scale an idea of a product and then they will create a 3D rendering of their product and finally create and build an actual prototype. They will be working with a variety of tools and will have much at their disposal when designing and building.
Current Fall Semester Project: Orthotic Solutions for Cerebral Palsy Patients
As you see in the pictures above, the students first project is to build orthotics solutions for Cerebral Palsy patients. Students were prived background on Cerebral Palsy, challenges and constraints needed for effectic orthotics prototypes. Students then completed design standards and a decision matrix to identify best possible designs. The students just completed their first prototypes.
Mr. Mullen’s son, Jordan, who has Cerebral Palsy, came in this week to try on the orthotics prototypes this week and our students are now working on improvements in their designs based on this first trial.
We asked Mr. Mullen what he thinks about this new program at SAS and how it’s impacting our students……“It is so difficult to truly capture how unique and amazing this program is. This provides our students a creative outlet with a meaningful purpose and tangible outcomes.”
As a STEAM-Designated School, we have an identity that guides the work and deepens the contexts by which we engage our partners and stakeholders:
‘Saint Ambrose School educators and students are innovative leaders using their faith, skills, talents and knowledge to solve humanitarian and technological issues affecting our world.’
It is exhilarating to work with our leader-partners in education, civics and industry to provide premier educational experiences for our students. As a STEAM school, we use researched best practices for our 21st Century learners so they have the essential skills necessary to meet their goals, achieve and be leaders in our communities and beyond.
We are very grateful that Medina County Career Center Superintendent, Steve Chrisman, and the Project Lead The Way organization replied with a resounding ‘YES!’ when we asked to participate in PLTW’s curriculum and programming! We are already seeing the benefits for our students and others, and we look forward to their incredible learning and leadership!”
Students are learning to solve real world problems here. Starting with a great orthotics prototypes to help Mr. Mullen’s son, Jordan.
Please visit the PLTW’s website to watch the videos, read the testimonials and browse the curriculum below, and stay tuned for more exciting news for this amazing program here at SAS in the Gillingham Center for Innovation.
