This week our team of Year 5 students visited RNAS Culdrose in Helston to take part in the FIRST LEGO League Cornwall finals. They have been working hard for the past few months creating a LEGO robot which can complete missions using code they’ve written, as well as solving a real world problem through their Innovation Project.
The competition proved a fantastic chance to celebrate all of their hard work and gave them the opportunity to share this with the judges and students from other schools. In fact, the Coral Coders were up against 26 other teams on the first day of the Cornwall regional finals.
So, let’s dive in and see how they got on…
Innovation Project
A good innovation project is all about finding a real world problem and designing a solution to help make the world a better place.
The Coral Coders immediately hit on their problem, Coral Anchoring. They explained that this is what happens when a ship drops its anchor and then pulls on it as it stops moving, thereby dragging up coral and damaging the precious seabed.
The solution the students settled on was to create a different shape anchor which wouldn’t drag across the seabed as much, thereby greatly reducing the amount of coral getting damaged.
“I liked the bit where we presented to the judges because we got to present the robot and anchor designs and we got to ask each other questions too which was really fun.”
– Massimo
The team put together a compelling presentation to share their project which they confidently delivered to the group of judges. Despite being their first time sharing this project outside of school, they came out buzzing with confidence and enthusiasm as the judges had really enjoyed their ideas and energy.
27 points
out of a total of 40
The judges agreed it was “brilliant to have identified a unique problem” and that they “created an excellent solution”. They also loved seeing the physical prototypes of their anchors in real life.
Overall the judges were really impressed with what they described as a “slick, well rehearsed and well planned presentation”.
Robot Design Presentation
The second half of the judging session focusses on the students sharing their Lego Robot and discussing the way they built it and how they learnt to code it.
As a first year team there was no shortage of things to talk about here and to try and cover as much ground as possible the team decided to do an ‘interview-style’ presentation where they asked each other questions about the robot and the journey they’d been on.
This proved highly effective and allowed the children plenty of opportunity to share their highs and lows of coding – from the missions which work every time to those which are much more troublesome – as well as all of the fun they’ve had along the way.
“When we were talking to the judges I kinda felt nervous but actually it was fine and as soon as we started talking I didn’t feel nervous anymore!”
– Charice
24 points
out of a total of 40
The feedback from the judges on their Robot Design presentation celebrated their “clear strategy, which was broken down into clear tasks” and suggested that further explaining how the code works would be a good place to develop for next time.
Robot Games
In the Robot Games you are given three opportunities to get your best score possible – giving each robot (and team member) a chance to warm up in the high-pressure environment at RNAS Culdrose.
The Coral Coders however were cool as cucumbers for their first match, with all five of the robot engineers launching their missions with control and precision – no mean feat! And more still, the continued for all three of the Robot Games runs.
“I think the robot games was really difficult, especially when the last code seemed to break the whole system! It was really difficult to fix but we did it! And the whole thing was crazy fun!”
– Sorrel
As the matches went on the scores steadily climbed too, as the robot completed the different missions they had programmed it to do. Whether releasing the shark, raising the ship mast or dropping the unknown sea creature, the robot moved with precision at all times.
“I found the robot building really fun, as was trying to program it. It was definitely hard, but super interesting doing the Robot Games!”
– Dexter
160
Round 1
170
Round 2
175
Round 3
Robot Games
The Coral Coders achieved the second highest score of the day in the Robot Games with a fantastic score of 175 points.
“I loved having a go with the Virtual Reality stand. It doesn’t matter if you win or not in the competition it’s about having so much fun”
– Resola
BBC Spotlight
If this wasn’t enough excitement for one day, three of our students were asked if they’d be happy to talk with a BBC reporter for Spotlight News!
Without hesitation all three said yes and I’m delighted to say their interview made it onto Spotlight news that very evening!
You can watch their interview on the right.
