A team for St Margaret’s Prep School in Calne has taken part in the The FIRST LEGO League Challenge, an annual global STEM challenge for 9-16 year olds. The challenge is always a major event in the St Margaret’s year, encouraging teams of young people to have an interest in real-world themes and develop key skills for their future careers. The challenge this year was called Cargo Connect, investigating how goods are moved around the world and how things can be improved for the future.
After months of preparation, the St Margaret’s Prep team, Cargo Collective, headed over to Bristol for the regional heats where it competed against many schools. The day was intense and demanding but the team took it all in its stride! The tournament engages teams of children in ‘hands-on’ design related to the programming and testing of an autonomous robot. This is coupled with a research project and presentation of the results before a panel of judges taken from industry and academia.
The research project set a challenge to find innovative solutions to transportation problems. The team looked at packaging and ways to maximise the space in containers. Its final solution used hexagons as a space efficient container, an idea often seen in nature. The team presented beautifully, even including a jingle, with the judges asking questions which the team answered in clear detail.
The robotics side of the competition went really well and the team gained 195 points – higher than it had scored in any of its practice attempts. An important part of the day is the ‘Core Values’ aspect of the competition and this involved the team interacting with other teams as well as how it work together as a team. Cargo Collective was very much a team to be admired and showed examples of the ‘Gracious Professionalism’ that the judges were looking for.
The team was excited as the day drew to a close and waited patiently as the various awards were presented. The great news was that Cargo Collective was delighted to be presented with one of the major awards, ‘The Most Enthusiastic Team Award’, by the sponsors Rowden Technologies. It was so special for the pupils to have months of hard work and dedication recognised at the tournament.
The team returned to St Margaret’s to some very proud and delighted parents and teachers!