LFCDS Empowering Elephants team members and 7th graders Emma Sturgeon and Teddy Vignocchi, both of Lake Forest, at the Legos Robotics tournament at Lake Forest Country Day School on Saturday, December 3. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER/JWC MEDIA
At some North Shore schools robotics is a required subject but for students in those classes it is about the fun they have with each other.
It is also about competition with each other and schools from throughout the northern suburbs with a chance to win a state championship.
A total of 16 teams from the North Shore and beyond competed in the First Lego League regional competition December 3 at Lake Forest Country Day School in Lake Forest with four advancing to the state tournament January 14 in Elgin.
With teams from Lake Forest Country Day, Deer Path Middle School in Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Wilmette and the Highland Park Public Library, the Empowering Elephants from Lake Forest Country Day was the only North Shore squad to make it to state.
At Lake Forest Country Day, eesigning a robot from Lego building blocks and competing in the league is part of the required Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculum. Head of School Bob Whelan said it is critical to the youngsters’ future.
“We are training them for jobs that don’t exist yet in industries that don’t exist yet,” said Whelan. “We are training them for transformative competencies where they learn to collaborate together as part of a team.”
The competitors score by programming the robots to perform a series of tasks ranging from simpler ones worth some points to more complex challenges with higher value but likely taking more time, according to Whelan.
The youngsters understand the concept but they explain it differently than Whelan. They work together to build their machine. They also go through four rounds of competition but only their highest score counts. Between efforts, they do some tweaking.
“We started from scratch,” Will Meyer of Lake Bluff said. He is a member of the Lake Forest Country Day Diving Dolphins. “We took all our ideas and came up with one robot. There was a lot of trial and error and made it work.”
Leo Anderson of Highland Park, another member of the Diving Dolphins, said they attack the easier tasks first to run up the score leaving the harder ones for later. After each round they talk to see if they should make changes in their approach, according to Will Meyer of Lake Forest, another member of the team.
Some of the Deer Path students approach each subsequent round with science and technology.
“We look at video to see didn’t work so we can make it work more smoothly,” said Stewart Thompson, a seventh grader said.
“We want to bump it up so we can get the zoologist,” added seventh grader Owen Schuler referring to a high value object on the competition table.
Competing teams also score points by helping each other. That is called cooperatition, according to Amy Hintzman, a seventh and eighth grade STEM teacher at Lake Forest Country Day. There are times while the robots are operating on the same table competing teams can score points by helping each other.
In addition to operating the robots, Hintzman said the students present their ideas to a team of engineers and are scored on that effort as well. It is added into the total points determining which team advances.
While some of the participants compete in other things like sports, Celeste Tomaselli, a Deer Path eighth grader who was taking part in the tournament, said robotics adds something no other activity does.
“When you play a sport you compete and it’s fun,” said Tomaselli. “The robot is like your baby. You program it, tell it what to do and then you see it perform.”
Skyler Noel, a home schooled fifth grader from Highland Park on the library team, said she likes experimenting with robots to see what they can do.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said Noel. “I took a class at the library and liked the engineering. I like to experiment and try new things.”
The Diving Dolphins of LFCDS team members Will Meyer of Lake Bluff (left) and Ricky Ascroft of Lake Forest with Hanna Cobin of Lake Bluff and Maggie Andrea of Highland Park at the Legos Robotics tournament at Lake Forest Country Day School on Saturday, December 3. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER/JWC MEDIA
The stress shows on the faces of Empowering Elephants team members Genevieve Farrell (Gurnee), EJ Newman (Vernon Hills), Amelia Jansing (Lake Forest) all 7th graders.
7th grader Turtly Dudes teammates Darina Sokolova of Gurnee (left) and Jessica Pasma of Lake Bluff
LFCDS’ The Diving Dolphins’ Leo Anderson of Highland Park
The Clucking for a Cure team is represented by Will Pfeifle of Great Lakes and Naomi Fleisch of Glencoe
Spectators at the Legos Robotics tournament