St Mary's Calne
After months of work and preparation, our school robotics team 'LegoLilies' participated in the fun and well-known First Lego League Challenge. Participating teams are asked to provide a solution to a potential problem, then build and code a robot to carry out a series of challenges in timed conditions. They are also assessed for the competition's core values which carries the same weighting as the other aspects of the challenge towards winning the competition. The journey starts every September, but competition day seems to arrive really quickly.
We had a fair start with the presentation of our project, a multichoice movie to encourage those in acting to gain confidence with a multichoice offering, lots of fun in the filming, great tech skills with the use of sound effects and green screen. The first round on the robotic challenge placed us midtable, with some missions not really going to plan but a good reflection of why that was the case, which was very positive.
In their presentation of the robot building and coding, the team really came together and provided a very strong offering that clearly impressed the judges.
After a little technical issue with the robot in the warm up table, our score in the second round jumped to 280 points which placed us in 4th place. This was getting really exciting... Our third round was our finest hour with a full 300 points, which is what we had planned for, and saw us jump to 3rd place.
This meant that we qualified to the knock-out stage and feeling pretty confident that we had a foot in the semi-final.
Unfortunately, our robot ("Minty") got stuck with one structure on the competition table and probably nerves played up on our team a little bit as we also missed on another mission, missing what felt like our place in the semi-final by just 10 points.
Having had such euphoria and then the depths of disappointment was testing moment for our team who behaved admirably in the face of adversity so it was a beautiful moment when our LegoLilies were awarded the winning cup for Core Values, which is given to a team that displays extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit, know that they can accomplish more together than they could as individuals, and who show each other, and other teams, respect at all times.
The final standings placed us in the top four out of the 23 teams taking part. What a brilliant day!
Congratulations to Jemima J (captain), Emilia C (vice-captain), Claudia F, Mia B, Ami B, Jessica H and Ellie T for their outstanding achievement in this competition.
Mr Hugo Lopez, Head of Computer Science