A group of Coldstream Primary School students are getting a solid foundation in STEM through the medium of LEGO and robotics.
Competing at the FIRST LEGO League Challenge Nationals on Saturday 6 December, the five students have already qualified through a regional competition and were practicing their craft on Thursday.
Students Jade, Eric, Kobi, Xander and Lucas all said they were nervous but excited to compete.
“It’s going to be more stressful, way more stressful but the regionals also was, since it was our first time doing anything competing against other people,” Jade said.
“It was very exciting after we reached second at the regionals, we were rampaging on about ‘Oh we’re second, we’re second, we’re second’, we checked every two seconds to make sure no one had overtaken us,” Kobi said.
The FIRST LEGO League Challenge involves teams of up to 10 students (with two allowed at the table to compete at any given time) building and programming a LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robot to complete ‘missions’ under time pressure.
The more missions that can be completed, the more points a team received and the team with the most points at the end of the day wins, however points are also received for a presentation explaining the programming of their robot, a popular vote from their fellow competitors for the team they liked and respected most and for displaying the FIRST Core Values of discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork and fun.
Retired teacher Frank McCarthy has been volunteering his time to help teach, guide and prepare the students for the competition and said there has been great change in the students from the group of five individuals with their own funny little ways of doing things at the start.
“Gradually they’ve formed into a team that, particularly since the regionals, have taken responsibility for themselves and as a team, we want to do better than we did in the regionals,” he said.
“To see Eric smiling all day at the regionals when he doesn’t smile terribly often, and to look at him again now, it’s just the cream on top of the cake.”
With only two and a half minutes on the clock and two students allowed to be working at the archaeology-themed map of this year’s competition, it is a fast-paced and frenetic event that will test their teamwork and calmness under pressure.
During a demonstration for their peers, not everything went right but the students reacted and readjusted, and when the robot successfully completed a task as envisioned, classmates cheered.
The students greatly encouraged others to give the competition a go in the future.
“It can be stressful at times but if you if you push through the stress then you can get rewards or trophies,” Eric said.
“I’ve learned a lot about coding all of the robots and building them all together… don’t do it with your mates though because you’ll probably just stuff around,” Lucas said.
“If I was a different person, I’d probably still do because it it’s it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done and a great hobby,” Xander said.
With the competition open for anyone aged between nine and 16 years old, the competition is certain to be stiff but the Coldstream Primary School team are up for the challenge.
Mr McCarthy said competing and working with the students has been an awesome experience for all involved and also encouraged others to try.
“First of all, it’s a fun thing to do, it’s a fun thing to actually see yourself build a robot, write some code and see the robot wander out around the board and do stuff, it’s the feeling of achievement that you’ve actually done something,” he said.
“But there’s also the growing closer to other people and being able to take the skills out to elsewhere, meeting up with 30 other teams or 60 other teams and seeing what other people are doing, what other schools are doing.”
