Home >
News and Events >
2016 >
First Lego League champs
21 November 2016
Aisha Kristiansen, curriculum leader from in Newcomb, writes about the success of grade 5 and 6 students from to school in a recent
STEM competition. By working in partnership with a university, the students were able to combine an interest in Lego with caring for their local coastal environment to provide some real world STEM learning.
Eight Grade 5 and 6 students from Christ the King participated in the First Lego League Competition at Swinburne University last weekend. The students have been working on a project ‘Animal Allies’ for 8 weeks and presented their innovative work to the judges. There are two main components to the competition with the first challenge of programming an EV3 machine to complete a series of missions related to animals. This section required the students to not only learn programming, but also redesign the EV3 machine. The second part of the challenge related to a research project and the students had to identify a problem in the community that they could solve. It had to be based on an animal, so the students contacted Phil at the Queenscliff Marine Biology Centre who discussed the problem of the Northern Pacific Seastar being brought into Corio Bay from Japan by cargo ships.
As a result of all their hard work, they were presented with the 'Research Award'. If this wasn't enough of a thrill, they were one of only three teams selected to represent Victoria at the National Championships in Sydney on the 10th of December. They competed against many top schools in Victoria, so this was an incredible result. There has been so much support along the way. A huge thank you to Matthew, Leanne, Naomi, Joseph and Johannes from Deakin University. Another big shout out to Mark Campbell from Ardoch who started us out on our First Lego League journey and who came up to support us on the day. I think their faces in the photo says it all! I couldn't be prouder of these amazing children.