The computing department at Durrington High School took their first team to the Lego League Regional Tournament for Sussex Area held at Gatwick Airport. The First Lego League Challenge is a global competition for young people aged 9 to 16, run in the UK by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Durrington High were the only state school from Worthing to attend the event and faced stiff competition from over 8 other teams, many of whom had competed for a number of years before at the competition.
The action-packed day saw the pupils working together to complete as many missions as possible on their challenge mat with their Lego programmable SPIKE Prime robots. The day involved three nail-biting rounds where the teams were judged by STEM ambassadors on how many points they could earn in the 2 ½ minutes on the clock. Between rounds the team had time to practice and refine their code to make improvements.
During the day Kyla Winter, First Lego League Delivery project lead, set them a creative build task where the students had to build some wearable art. Art was chosen as the mission map this year was all based on the Arts. Alongside all the programming, the students managed to build the most amazing Lego hat. This was a true work of art, they even included the school logo and modelled this on a catwalk!
The students also had to give a 30-minute presentation to a group of STEM ambassadors, based on an innovation project they had designed. Our students’ idea was using augmented reality to bring to life collector’s cards, such as Lego cards. They all answered questions after the presentation on their idea, their robot building and design and also how they met the Lego Leagues core values.
The students were able to answer the questions on core values so well that the judges awarded them the Core Values Trophy at the end of the day along with a Lego medal for taking part.
We are truly proud of every single student who took part as they all worked incredibly hard and impressed the STEM ambassadors at Gatwick. Well done Team Durrington!
