<h2>Project Lead the Way (PLTW)</h2>

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<img class="size-medium wp-image-11531 alignleft" src="https://www.vsba.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/IMG_0458-2-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300">Launch  is an innovative project-based learning program that incorporates science, technology, engineering, and math. PLTW empowers students to develop and apply transportable skills (communication, creative and critical thinking, citizenship, collaboration) by exploring real-world challenges in exciting and engaging ways. PLTW offers pathways of study in computer science, engineering, and biomedical science. Students learn technical skills while they practice the transportable skills. Teachers facilitate modules that consist of activities, a project and a problem to solve.  This process allows students to gain knowledge and skills they will need to solve a real-world problem.

In an effort to relaunch our program after the Covid Pandemic shutdowns, McHarg and Belle Heth Elementary decided to combine forces to create a Biomedical Immersive week-long experience for their students.  The schools transformed common areas of the school with skeletons and anatomy models borrowed from Radford University’s Biology Department.  Many classrooms created immersive experiences by transforming their classrooms into areas consistent with their module. For example: emergency rooms, biomedical laboratories, the inside of a bee hive or the human brain with models of neurons lining the hallway.

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Each grade level experienced a different PLTW -Launch Biomedical module.
Kindergarten: Healthy Habits

First Grade: The Human Body
Second Grade: Animal Adaptations
Third Grade: Life Cycles: The Life of a Bee
Fourth Grade: Input/Output: Human Brain
Fifth Grade: Infection Detection
Sixth Grade:  Variation of Traits

Students and teachers alike had positive remarks about the experience and were thrilled with the outcome.  Both schools plan to continue this experience in the first quarter of each school year. What a great way to set the tone for experienced-based learning for the rest of the school year!