Launch Pad: Session 4, Week 4

Welcome to the fourth week of the LP Newsletter! 

On Monday, for genre, we split up into groups and gave each other a six-trait critique of our first podcast draft. We use the six-trait critique format to organize the feedback we give to each other’s work. It includes six different categories of writing: Idea Development, Organization, Word Choice, Voice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions. Next, we improved our drafts based on the feedback we received from each other. On Tuesday, we found a quiet spot and recorded ourselves reading the draft of our podcast. We listened to ourselves and found things to improve, like ensuring we sounded natural. 

On Thursday, we gathered and brainstormed many different ideas for raising money for our eventual trip. We considered yard sales, dog walking, babysitting, tutoring, and more. 

Quest was very fun this week. On Monday, we observed a painting of a dead body. We recorded things we thought would be of note to help us determine the cause of death, such as the position the person died in, what items were in the room, and what the person looked like. 

This led to Tuesday and Wednesday when we played a medical simulation to practice diagnosing patients. For hours we worked on cases like an intentional overdose, a stab wound, and severe shoulder pain. We stabilized our patients, asked questions, ordered scans, and diagnosed patients. 

On Thursday, we researched one disease from each of the nine bodily systems we had studied earlier in the session. We recorded the symptoms patients might have, tests that could be run, and treatments that could be used.

Last but not least, we had a hero’s visit on Thursday. Sam DeMaria came to speak about his medical experience as an anesthesiologist. We learned a lot about the challenging path that medical school is and all the rigorous years you have to put in to become a doctor. He showed us exactly what the hero’s journey of someone who wants to become a doctor would look like. It was a great and very informative hero’s visit.

Quest and the Hero’s Visit were my favorite activities this week as we all learned so much from them!