South Whittier’s Loma Vista Elementary is now a school-wide Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Project Lead the Way School.
Loma Vista applied for and received a Verizon Innovative Grant to purchase the Project Lead the Way, or PLTW, curriculum last school year for their sixth grade students. Principal, Kristine Carreon, thought why just our 6th graders? And decided to implement this STEM curriculum school-wide.
PLTW is a STEM curriculum that, “empowers students to develop and apply in-demand, transportable skills by exploring real-world challenges. Through our pathways in computer science, engineering, and biomedical science, students not only learn technical skills, but also learn to solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate, and collaborate.”
“Project Lead the Way is implemented into all of our classrooms, kindergarten through sixth grade, with one module this year,” Loma Vista Instructional Coach, Ms. Kivi, stated. “We are rolling out one module at a time and next year we hope to add a second module to each grade level.”
All grade levels participate in PLTW in their classroom weekly to four days a week. Every grade level is working on hands-on lessons that are in line with science standards. Students are learning to build structures out of pipe cleaners, code computer programs and games, code and program robots and micro-bits, and much more.
“Students are very engaged with the Project Lead the Way module,” Ms. Kivi shared. “They start each module with an interactive story that provides the students with an interactive problem that the students will solve by the end of the module, and then they go through three activities where they do hands-on learning to learn the knowledge that they need in order to do the project and solve the problem.”
According to Project Lead the Way their studies have proven that this program contributes to a strong, positive impact on mathematics and science achievement. Their program has a positive influence on students’ career interest and likelihood to continue their education and offers a pathway to prepare and motivate students to enter careers in science and engineering.
In this video viewers can see the hands-on activities and programming that students are doing through this curriculum.
Loma Vista Elementary plans to continue to grow this program with continuing to purchase another module next year.
Learn more at https://www.pltw.org.
View the Loma Vista Project Lead the Way video here: