The Programme
FIRST® LEGO® League shows young people what it means to be an engineer and work with STEM skills and subjects, but focuses on practical, hands-on learning, so they are doing, not watching. FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is designed for 9-16 year-olds and develops key skills that are crucial for their future careers. Young people work together to explore a given topic and to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO® robot to solve a series of missions.
Robot Game - Teams build a robot using a LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime kit that they program to autonomously complete a series of missions on a specialised field to score as many points as possible.
Innovation Project - Teams research the annual theme as detailed in the Challenge documentation pack. After exploring different ideas, they identify one problem related to the theme, design a solution to solve it, and develop a presentation to communicate that solution.
Robot Design - Teams explain the process of designing, building and programming the LEGO® robot they are using in the Robot Game.
Core Values - Teams work together constantly to solve problems and create solutions.
The six Core Values that run through each programme are Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun. These Core Values are integral to the programme, and whilst they are working towards an end goal and have many objectives, developing these skills is the most important part of the programme for participants. The programme gives all children in a team equal opportunity and each team member must contribute in order for the team to be successful.
What you can do
Teachers and coaches are fully supported with comprehensive resources available to download on the Learnit and IET websites, training videos, digital assets and support.
You can sign up here, and if you're in a location with funding, complete the 30 Day Challenge to get grant funding to cover all the costs associated with delivering the programme in your school or community group. The team at Learnit (Ireland) or the IET (UK) will support you through the process.
The Programme
FIRST® LEGO® League shows young people what it means to be an engineer and work with STEM skills and subjects, but focuses on practical, hands-on learning, so they are doing, not watching. FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is designed for 9-16 year-olds and develops key skills that are crucial for their future careers. Young people work together to explore a given topic and to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO® robot to solve a series of missions.
Robot Game - Teams build a robot using a LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime kit that they program to autonomously complete a series of missions on a specialised field to score as many points as possible.
Innovation Project - Teams research the annual theme as detailed in the Challenge documentation pack. After exploring different ideas, they identify one problem related to the theme, design a solution to solve it, and develop a presentation to communicate that solution.
Robot Design - Teams explain the process of designing, building and programming the LEGO® robot they are using in the Robot Game.
Core Values - Teams work together constantly to solve problems and create solutions.
The six Core Values that run through each programme are Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun. These Core Values are integral to the programme, and whilst they are working towards an end goal and have many objectives, developing these skills is the most important part of the programme for participants. The programme gives all children in a team equal opportunity and each team member must contribute in order for the team to be successful.
What you can do
Teachers and coaches are fully supported with comprehensive resources available to download on the Learnit and IET websites, training videos, digital assets and support.
You can sign up here, and if you're in a location with funding, complete the 30 Day Challenge to get grant funding to cover all the costs associated with delivering the programme in your school or community group. The team at Learnit (Ireland) or the IET (UK) will support you through the process.
Claire's 3rd Class have started the First Lego League Explore Superpowered Challenge.
Thanks to the funding from the Ireland Community Play Fund supported by the LEGO Foundation as part of it's #BuildAWorldOfPlay campaign.
Check out some of our progress below. We have been investigating energy sources and we will be learning lots about energy and its distribution in the coming weeks.
Can you spot any sustainable energy models in the photos?
Thank you to ChangeX for their support to purchase all of this (and more) amazing new Lego. We even have colour coded storage so each team can keep their project safe week to week. We cannot wait to start the programming elements soon.
Teamwork makes the dreamwork :D
We are going to start this project with 3rd Class.
Claire is teaching one third class and her co-teacher Cian will complete the programme at the same time.
Sarah in 4th class will then co-ordinate the programme for her class level.
Caitriona and Siobhan will continue to run their Lego afterschool club with the new Lego and will open it up to other class levels.
The classes will engage during class time and they will start in October. We will purchase the lego in Sept once settled into our new building.
Claire will take over all responsibility for storage and ensuring programme is up and running in each class. The lego will be returned to Claire's room at the end of each session. Claire will pre-book the iPads for the class to use and ensure they are on charge beforehand.
We will purchase the Spike Prime Core Lego Sets as we can use them with our school set of iPads to develop the students coding skills further. (basic Scratch animations last year)
We will conduct this programme according to our school Covid Response Plan (https://www.pelletstownetns.ie/pages/covid.html). We will ensure the children sanitize their hands before and after using the lego and that the classrooms are well ventilated.
The children in school will benefit from this project as they will develop their coding skills and work as part of a team. They have to apply computational thinking skills and will progress each week of the challenge. They will work together, be open to the world of STEAM and have fun in a sucessful and supportive environment! As this will also be offered as an afterschool activity it opens it up for access to the whole school community and not just our target classes.