The Project Lead the Way Gateway program introduces students in upper elementary and middle school to fields such as robotics, computer programming and 3-D printing, among other topics, during the St. Joseph School District’s monthlong summer school session.
Jeff Campbell, Project Lead the Way teacher at Truman Middle School, explained how the summer program meshes with the Project Lead the Way curriculum the district already offers during the standard academic year.
“The focus of the summer class was just to get kids introduced,” Campbell said. “We have a lot of students who are just getting ready to come into middle school, and we have a few students transitioning to eighth or even ninth grade, so we wanted to provide a little of a Project Lead the Way focus while going a little bit further than what we can do sometimes in class.”
Thursday’s class included a lesson from Jeff Adams, automotive electrical instructor at Hillyard, that showed students the basic ways electronics functioned in an automobile. The group then followed Campbell to a lab, where the focus turned to circuits and programming.
John Grant, who will start eighth grade next fall at Cathedral School, explained why he signed up for the program.
“I’m interested about robotics and coding and all the stuff that has to do with computers, and I hoped to learn about coding and about robots and about 3-D printers as well,” Grant said.
Campbell said the class would delve into 3-D printing next week, with students eventually printing an item they designed themselves. By the end of the course, the class will take on a design challenge inspired by NASA that will involve finding a way to grow plants in space.
Project Lead the Way is a not-for-profit organization that develops curriculum based in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) for students at the elementary, middle school and high school levels.
©2017 the St. Joseph News-Press (St. Joseph, Mo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
