LEGOs lead to programming robots, fun – and oh, yeah, learning

Intermountain Catholic

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The Brick Bots team reviews their performance score with the referee at the competition.

OGDEN —To the cheers of the Saint Joseph Elementary School team, the car sped across the board, programmed to respond to the natural disaster scenario created for the FIRST Lego League (FLL) competition. Then, suddenly, they groaned as the car tipped over on its side.

Still, the St. Joseph Brick Bots knew they had two more chances to get it right, and immediately set about dissecting the problem and determining a solution that involved a little bit of computer programming and a little bit of re-configuring the robot.

The next two tries also didn’t garner enough points to secure the Brick Bots a berth at the FLL state competition, but team members describe their experiences only in positive words.

Although they would have liked to advance, they "didn’t get bitter or upset" at not advancing in the competition, said their coach, Shannon Reichert, who teaches fourth grade at St. Joseph. "They see it overall as a fun experience." 

The five Brick Bots team members – Alex Klein, Sydney Brown, Jordan Miller, Alexis Brown and Keagan Stuckey – view the six months they spent researching earthquakes, preparing an oral presentation and a skit, and programming robots as fun. 

Also competing for St. Joseph was the team of Jack Durbano, Katrin Miller and Grant Leland, coached by fifth-grade teacher Justin Rague.

All of the students are in grades five through seven, and are required to maintain their academic grades before they can participate in the extra-curricular FLL.

"I had a blast," Keagan said. "It’s fun. You get to program robots, you get to play with LEGOs. It’s just so cool."

For the competition, each team had to choose a natural disaster, then create a solution to that disaster and program a robot to respond to it. The Brick Bots researched earthquakes, determining that buildings with broader bases withstand quakes better than those with narrower bases.

Three of the Brick Bots team competed in FLL last year, and they mentored the newer members in programming skills, Reichert said.

Although the students looked forward to the programming, first came six weeks of research. They also had to produce a project that demonstrated and explained their research, and create a skit.

At the competition, the Brick Bots received solid scores on their project research, Reichert said, but didn’t do so well on programming.

"What they said was we needed more developed programming, and that will come as we get more students that have more programming," Reichert said. "We scored the highest – six out of eight exemplaries – in core values, which looks at how well your team works together, how well they communicate with each other and their behavior throughout the whole entire day. I commended them because to me, that matters more than if you know how to program. That’s what we’re trying to teach our kids."

Sydney Brown and Alexis Brown, who are sisters, both competed last year and wanted to do so again this year "because it had been really, really fun and I wanted to meet some new people again," Sydney said. "We learned how to work together and work as a team, to know each other and respect each other and not interrupt each other." 

All of the students said they want to participate in FLL next year because of the fun they had this year.