Lego Regional Winners
Porthleven School’s Lego League Journey So Far!
Back in September, the children were introduced to the Lego League and were given the opportunity to apply for a space on the team. Once the team was picked and the kit arrived, the team set off building the missions with Mrs Blight and getting to know each other as a team.
They worked hard as a team each session, rushing up to Lego club to build on their mission plans for the competition as soon as the bell went for lunch. The team were so keen that they asked to meet almost daily! We not only worked hard on building our robot and completing the missions, but also worked on our innovation project, which was all about using technology to get other people interested in our hobbies/interests.
Instead of splitting the children into different roles, the children decided that they wanted to all work together on all the sections so that they could help each other become more confident in all the areas. They also invited in different professionals to gain feedback on their robot design and their innovation project.
After many hours of practice and tweaks to their coding and scripts, the day of the regional finals arrived and we were off to Culdrose! The competition was so popular it had to be split over two days, however when we arrived we were faced with 30 other teams of children all hoping to be successful.
The competition itself is broken down into 4 sections, each worth 25% towards the final score. These sections are: ‘Core Values’, ‘Robot Design’, ‘Innovation Project’ and ‘Robot Game’. Our first challenge of the day was the ‘Robot Game’, so we headed off to the practice arena for one final trial before having our timed missions. The children only had two and a half minutes to complete their missions, so had to work quickly as a team.
Round 1 didn’t go to plan with a couple missions not quite working, however we tried not to feel too disappointed and headed back to the practice table to tweak our coding before Round 2.
Round 2 was much more successful with only one mission not quite working as expected. Round 3 saw the team completing all their missions successfully, even having some time to spare at the end!
The next part of our day was presenting our innovation project and robot design. Feeling a little nervous at this point, the team set up all their props in front of the three judges. They soon relaxed into the presentation and confidently talked about their ideas, answering questions throughout.
They then had to talk about their robot design, showing the engineering design process of Identify, Design, Create, Iterate, Communicate. Throughout the day they are marked on the core values, Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun. The team came away happy with what they had done keen to look around the rest of the hanger, which was full of amazing STEM opportunities!
With everyone gathered at the end of the day for the final results, the Wave Makers were stood with everything crossed hoping for a good result! After cheering on the fantastic results and awards for the other schools, it was time for the final ‘Champion’s Award’. When Porthleven School was called, the children exploded with excitement and headed up onto the stage to collect their trophy! The team went straight back to working hard as a team to improve ready for Nationals in Harrogate in April and are excited to see how far ‘The Wave Makers’ can go!
You can see the Cornwall Council families together report and video here:
